Should It Be In You?

As I was sitting at a girls' basketball game between Spaulding High School and Rice Memorial High School on a cold night in Barre, I noticed that there were two titans competing. While the teams were great, I noticed what was that the end of the benches. I'm not referring to assistant coaches, statisticians, managers, or any of the players who happen to be avoiding the coach; this battle was between Powerade on the Crimson Tide bench and Gatorade on the Green Knights bench. Gatorade is obviously the household name as it has been immortalized through many "Gatorade moments" such as the tradition of dumping that signature orange cylinder of odd colored liquid over the victorious coach's head. However, Powerade has come into the market as a larger force in recent years because of a more modern image headlines by a new version of Gatorade's classic spokesman, Lebron James who has been compared to His Airness many times. Realistic videos of Lebron doing the impossible such as nailing full-court shot after full-court shot have given Powerade an image. As opposed to just being a lesser substitute, Powerade has arrived as a legitimate competitor even though Gatorade still holds a vast margin on the overall market. Why has Gatorade remained so dominant? After all, according to research done, Gatorade and Powerade are not significantly different in formula. The first reason is, as I mentioned before, the tradition. For so long Gatorade has been directly related to winning as a celebratory gesture. Therefore, any new entrant into the market will not have any possible way to compete with this history simply because they don't have it. You can't create history. Another reason Gatorade will remain dominant is because they already are dominant despite the fact that they charge more for teams to use their product. Upon viewing both companies' online stores, for the same amount of money, which would be one of Powerade's large kits and two of Gatorade's, I discovered that:
• Gatorade would give you a larger cooler (60 quarts versus 40 quarts)
• They would both provide two 10 quart coolers
• Powerade would give 14 more towels
• Powerade would give 26 more clutch bottles
• They would both provide four bottle carriers
• Gatorade would give 500 more disposable cups
• Gatorade would give 12 more gallons of beverage made with powder

In looking at these, it appears that Powerade would give the consumer more for their money with a product that is seemingly of equal quality. Why then would people not use Powerade? Through ingenious marketing, Gatorade has been able to differentiate themselves from the market in a way that most companies only dream of being able to do.