Gatorade Takes High School Athletes Through G-Series Paces

Gatorade is wrapping up a tour next week in Colorado that has traveled to nine high schools with a mobile locker room to educate athletes on the importance of proper hydration—and if they need to rehydrate to turn to its G-Series.

The trailer—built for Pro Motion Inc. by Craftsman Industries, St. Louis—stretches 53 feet and expands to double its capacity.

The tour began in April at Kirkwood High School in St. Louis. Inside the vehicle are 20 large lockers, a 63” smart board for “chalk talks,” two fluid-loss testing stations, blogging stations and six monitors with DirecTV and X-Box 360.

The vehicle opens for business at about 1 pm at each school for athletic staff and trainers, before welcoming varsity and junior varsity athletes. The students are educated about the G-Series before putting it to the test during actual workouts where they are given G-Series practice attire. The athletes drink G-Prime, the first stage before a workout, then G-Perform during their workouts. They then return to the vehicle for a fluid loss test and, if necessary, drink G-Recovery.

“It’s not about selling the product, this is very education focused,” Steve Randazzo, president of Pro Motion, which executed the campaign said.
“It’s about teaching the high school athletes and the coaching staff about how important hydration is.”

At each stop, top professional athletes are on hand as a draw and to talk about proper hydration. At Kirkwood, Chris Long, a defensive end for the St. Louis Rams, met with the students.

At the nine stops about 400 to 500 athletes attended each event. The tour ends next week in Colorado, but also made stops in Tallahassee, FL, Baltimore, MD, and Chicago.

“The idea was to educate as many kids as possible,” Randazzo said.

The locker room also features autographed memorabilia from select Gatorade athletes, including Peyton Manning, Derek Jeter, and Dwayne Wade. It closes down for the day around 7 pm.

Fathom Communications, Gatorade’s lead agency, selected the schools (and developed the idea for the tour) based on reasons those schools had to celebrate. For example, at Kirkwood, a long-time tennis coach was retiring.

“The goal was to go to schools that really had something to celebrate, such as state championships or consecutive wins for a particular team,” Randazzo said.