Thomas Gargiulo is competitive by nature, so he loves the exercise of building a sports drink brand that goes up against a major competitor.
The chief marketing officer of The Coca Cola Company’s BODYARMOR Sports Drink brand says he is constantly “trying to find ways to get to that top spot and have that challenger mindset has always been something that’s been appealing to me.”
BODYARMOR ran a Super Bowl spot in this year’s game to introduce the drink to a wider audience. The “Field of Fake” spot features athlete partners Christian McCaffrey, CeeDee Lamb, Joe Burrow, Alex Morgan, Ronald Acuna and Connor McDavid.
More recently, the brand is running a campaign with Olivia Culpo & Christian McCaffrey to promote BODYARMOR ZERO SUGAR.
“It’s all around delivering unique experiences,” says Gargiulo. “It’s all about delivering real ingredients and a healthy version of what a sports drink is. This is just the start. We have a long runway of innovation coming out over the next couple of years that we’re really excited about.”
Brand Innovators caught up with Gargiulo from his office in New York to talk BODYARMOR ZERO SUGAR, Super Bowl and innovation. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Can you talk about the strategy behind the new BODYARMOR ZERO SUGAR campaign and who you’re looking to reach?
One of the biggest challenges that we’ve had over the last couple of years is that zero sugar is such a huge part of the category. We had our Lyte brand, which has always done very well and is a big part of our portfolio. BODYARMOR ZERO SUGAR is really against low calorie, no added sugar products. When we were able to bring this to market, it really helped us open up to a completely new consumer and a completely new population within the category we weren’t speaking to before. In terms of the actual marketing plans behind it and how we’ve approached it, the plan behind ZERO SUGAR and our biggest point of difference versus the competition is the fact that we have real ingredients, no artificial sweeteners, no artificial colors, and there’s basically zero to hide behind.
We’re not trying to hide anything in our product. We want to tell consumers, point blank, that if you’re looking for a zero product, this is going to be the most honest, transparent and best-tasting product you’ll have. That’s why we decided to run with the campaign Zero to Hide. In addition to that, we have an opportunity to also appeal to a broader audience beyond just core sport. That’s why we enlisted the help of Olivia Culpo and ultimately, Christian McCaffrey, to really help us tell that story.
What is your approach to involvement with Major League Soccer and U.S. Soccer?
We’re the official sponsor of Major League Soccer and U.S. Soccer, and with the World Cup coming into our backyard in a couple of years, we knew that this was a great opportunity for us to strike while they aren’t taut and really claim that ownership stake in that sport.
The obvious choice was to partner with a property that is up and coming, that’s continuing to improve year after year and that has an incredible amount of resources pouring in over the last few years. [U.S. Soccer] is building a new facility down in Atlanta where sports, medicine and science are going to be intersecting. It’s a great way for us to not only partner with a great partner in U.S. Soccer, but also to help pave a path for BODYARMOR growth and future innovation.
Can you talk about any learnings that you have from the Super Bowl?
One of the key learnings is the price is incredibly high and it keeps on getting higher the closer that you get to the event. Ultimately, this is a really challenging year for any consumer brand and [we’re] in an election year. We’re in the middle of all of the turmoil happening in the world and to really break through and to tell the consumer messages is a bit of a challenge. We’ve really pivoted heavily towards digital media as the channel that we’re really focusing on – digital and social media. We also know that households are probably one of the biggest areas of opportunity. It is the single biggest area of opportunity for our brand.
When we wanted to start off the year with a bang, we wanted to start off the year with an opportunity to tell our story. We thought about what platforms we could do it with. The Super Bowl was the obvious choice. It’s the biggest platform in the world. You’re never getting as many eyeballs as you will for that one single event. We decided to take the leap and put together a piece of creative art that we’re really proud of that really speaks to our point of difference [and] really does a great job in breaking through the clutter.
Can you talk about how your past experiences have helped shape your current perspective?
I’m very fortunate enough to have a pretty broad breadth of experiences across different categories and different products. The one major theme that you can see across all the products that I’ve worked on is they’re very much positioned towards health and wellness. All the products that I try to touch have at least a functional benefit or a health and wellness halo. The ingredients in the product are inherent to the benefits that they deliver to our consumers.
Helping tell the story about how our products can either help prevent something or help proactively address something with our consumers has been incredibly important to me. When I had the opportunity to join BODYARMOR, it just made it a perfect fit.
How are you thinking about innovation in 2024?
2024 is really the year where we’re trying to basically catch up. I’m going to say that very point blank. There are parts of the category that we just haven’t been able to participate in. A lot of those parts of the portfolio, or parts of the category, are some of the fastest growing parts of the category and driving the growth for the category. Being able to bring BODYARMOR ZERO SUGAR to the portfolio has been a massive win for us. The performance that we’re seeing in that marketplace has been incredible. Productivity of the product is above 2x of what the category average is.
When we talk about rapid rehydration, this is becoming a tried and true category in other parts of the world, especially in South and Central America. But now it’s becoming a bigger and bigger part of the mix here in the U.S. Having a really great brand of BODYARMOR Flash I.V. [and] being able to compete and participate in that category has been tremendous since it’s been working exceptionally well in the convenience channel.
[BODYARMOR Flash I.V.] is a great opportunity for us to have our brand placed in different parts of the store and participate in new occasions like travel and things of that nature. It just is a great opportunity for us to continue to grow our households, to bring the BODYARMOR brand to new and different occasions, and to deliver new and different benefits.
