MNeagle
14th September 2010, 07:06 PM
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BG000_GATORA_D_20100913175345.jpg
Staffers sit in Gatorade's "Mission Control" room in Chicago, used to monitor the Internet and social-media outlets. Gatorade has four full-time people on the Mission Control effort.
CHICAGO—Sitting in a glassed-in converted conference room at Gatorade headquarters here, Meg Poulelis tweets encouragement to high-school athletes before big games and taps out responses to Facebook queries such as when to use the new protein drink.
Ms. Poulelis is one of a handful of employees who staff "Mission Control," part of PepsiCo Inc.'s latest effort to kick-start sales of Gatorade, which had been on a three-year sales slide.
PepsiCo is trying to breathe new life into one of its most profitable brands by using Internet services to reconnect with teen athletes who snubbed Gatorade when it became ubiquitous—and uncool.
Gatorade staffers monitor social-media posts 24 hours a day in the glitzy hub, hoping what they see and learn will help the company more effectively promote its new G-Series of drinks, which launched last spring.
Whenever someone uses Twitter to say they're drinking a Gatorade or mentions the brand on Facebook or in other social media, it pops up on a screen in Mission Control. On Saturday, the staff jumped into a Facebook conversation to correct a poster who said Gatorade has high-fructose corn syrup.
"It's like we're a person in their social circle now," said Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Robb O'Hagan, who is leading Gatorade's makeover. She said Gatorade's approach, if successful, would be a model for other PepsiCo brands like Quaker Oats and Tropicana.
Aware that consumers may be wary of intrusion, Ms. Poulelis and her colleagues have to figure out when to pipe up—and when to hang back—when someone online is talking about Gatorade. "If they're directly asking where to buy products, we're going to weigh in," Ms. Poulelis said. "If they want to talk about working out, we let them have that conversation."
Mission Control, launched in April, represents an unusually extensive effort by a company to track social media, according to experts. Most companies are in some stage of figuring out social-media tracking, from hiring advertising agencies to do it for them to using free or off-the-shelf software tools to do it themselves.
But few have staff monitoring blog and other posts alongside those tracking online-ad traffic, producing a consolidated picture of the brand's Internet image. Gatorade hopes such coordination will help head off potential crises like a brouhaha last year over PepsiCo's slow response to consumer complaints that an Apple iPhone application for its Amp energy drink was sexist.
Gatorade declined to disclose how much it has spent to create and maintain Mission Control, which has four full-time people, including some from Gatorade's ad agency. The company has built a proprietary set of protocols using products from International Business Machines Corp., social-media tracker Radian6 and others, to aggregate and weigh real-time opinions. It gives more importance to mentions made by loyal fans, people with a lot of followers, or people whose opinions tend to get picked up.
Mission Control also allows the company to monitor consumer behavior in depth. Ms. Robb O'Hagan and her team can pull reports on how long consumers who click on banner ads stay on Gatorade's website, how often someone who searches for "protein drink" clicks on a link for Gatorade Recover and how the new products fare with influential groups.
Gatorade says Mission Control is improving its marketing. The company extended an "Evolve" 60-second ad tune into a full-length track available for download in response to frequent questions like "Who sings that song?" Gatorade also knew to bulk up production of its recovery drinks because of complaints they were selling out.
But it's unclear yet whether tracking social media sells more sports drinks. Gatorade sales rose 7% in the second quarter and 2.4% for the first half of the year, according to the trade publication Beverage Digest. But that growth came in an unusually hot summer, and compared with poor year sales the previous year.
"We are still in major 'wait and see' mode on the Gatorade turnaround," said analyst John A. Faucher of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in a recent report.
Gatorade remains under pressure from Coca-Cola Co.'s Powerade, whose sales increased 16.8% in the first half of the year in spite of a minimal social-media presence. Powerade's Facebook page has less than one-tenth the followers of Gatorade's page.
Powerade plans to roll out a social-media strategy in the coming months, but has done well so far relying on so-called street teams who pass out Powerade samples at athletic events, said spokesman Scott Williamson. "It's old-school social media," he added.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703466704575489673244784924.html?m od=WSJ_newsreel_technology#ixzz0zYklAfDB
Staffers sit in Gatorade's "Mission Control" room in Chicago, used to monitor the Internet and social-media outlets. Gatorade has four full-time people on the Mission Control effort.
CHICAGO—Sitting in a glassed-in converted conference room at Gatorade headquarters here, Meg Poulelis tweets encouragement to high-school athletes before big games and taps out responses to Facebook queries such as when to use the new protein drink.
Ms. Poulelis is one of a handful of employees who staff "Mission Control," part of PepsiCo Inc.'s latest effort to kick-start sales of Gatorade, which had been on a three-year sales slide.
PepsiCo is trying to breathe new life into one of its most profitable brands by using Internet services to reconnect with teen athletes who snubbed Gatorade when it became ubiquitous—and uncool.
Gatorade staffers monitor social-media posts 24 hours a day in the glitzy hub, hoping what they see and learn will help the company more effectively promote its new G-Series of drinks, which launched last spring.
Whenever someone uses Twitter to say they're drinking a Gatorade or mentions the brand on Facebook or in other social media, it pops up on a screen in Mission Control. On Saturday, the staff jumped into a Facebook conversation to correct a poster who said Gatorade has high-fructose corn syrup.
"It's like we're a person in their social circle now," said Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Robb O'Hagan, who is leading Gatorade's makeover. She said Gatorade's approach, if successful, would be a model for other PepsiCo brands like Quaker Oats and Tropicana.
Aware that consumers may be wary of intrusion, Ms. Poulelis and her colleagues have to figure out when to pipe up—and when to hang back—when someone online is talking about Gatorade. "If they're directly asking where to buy products, we're going to weigh in," Ms. Poulelis said. "If they want to talk about working out, we let them have that conversation."
Mission Control, launched in April, represents an unusually extensive effort by a company to track social media, according to experts. Most companies are in some stage of figuring out social-media tracking, from hiring advertising agencies to do it for them to using free or off-the-shelf software tools to do it themselves.
But few have staff monitoring blog and other posts alongside those tracking online-ad traffic, producing a consolidated picture of the brand's Internet image. Gatorade hopes such coordination will help head off potential crises like a brouhaha last year over PepsiCo's slow response to consumer complaints that an Apple iPhone application for its Amp energy drink was sexist.
Gatorade declined to disclose how much it has spent to create and maintain Mission Control, which has four full-time people, including some from Gatorade's ad agency. The company has built a proprietary set of protocols using products from International Business Machines Corp., social-media tracker Radian6 and others, to aggregate and weigh real-time opinions. It gives more importance to mentions made by loyal fans, people with a lot of followers, or people whose opinions tend to get picked up.
Mission Control also allows the company to monitor consumer behavior in depth. Ms. Robb O'Hagan and her team can pull reports on how long consumers who click on banner ads stay on Gatorade's website, how often someone who searches for "protein drink" clicks on a link for Gatorade Recover and how the new products fare with influential groups.
Gatorade says Mission Control is improving its marketing. The company extended an "Evolve" 60-second ad tune into a full-length track available for download in response to frequent questions like "Who sings that song?" Gatorade also knew to bulk up production of its recovery drinks because of complaints they were selling out.
But it's unclear yet whether tracking social media sells more sports drinks. Gatorade sales rose 7% in the second quarter and 2.4% for the first half of the year, according to the trade publication Beverage Digest. But that growth came in an unusually hot summer, and compared with poor year sales the previous year.
"We are still in major 'wait and see' mode on the Gatorade turnaround," said analyst John A. Faucher of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in a recent report.
Gatorade remains under pressure from Coca-Cola Co.'s Powerade, whose sales increased 16.8% in the first half of the year in spite of a minimal social-media presence. Powerade's Facebook page has less than one-tenth the followers of Gatorade's page.
Powerade plans to roll out a social-media strategy in the coming months, but has done well so far relying on so-called street teams who pass out Powerade samples at athletic events, said spokesman Scott Williamson. "It's old-school social media," he added.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703466704575489673244784924.html?m od=WSJ_newsreel_technology#ixzz0zYklAfDB