Gatorade’s History Shows You Should Never Forget Your Brand’s Story

There’s an easy way to earn credibility.

We meet all kinds of businesses with cool backstories. But, for some reason, they rarely talk about their history.

That’s a missed opportunity. Explaining who you are and where you came from is an easy and effective way to earn customers’ trust.

Just look at Gatorade, a brand that’s smartly leveraged its origin story for decades.

It began in 1965. Back then, football players thought drinking water was unmanly and slowed them down. Unsurprisingly, players would lose up to 20 pounds in a single game, and routinely collapsed from dehydration.

University of Florida Gators football coach and former New York Giants player Dewayne Douglas mentioned this to campus kidney disease researcher James Cade. Cade’s solution was a solution: a mix of salt, sugar and water.

The first batches made people gag. Cade’s wife suggested adding lemon juice. They did, and another researcher jokingly dubbed it Gatorade.

However, Florida’s head coach didn’t want his varsity team trying it first. So Cade fed it to the freshmen. And when the freshmen beat the varsity practice squad in a scrimmage – a game affectionately called “The Toilet Bowl” – the whole team started to drink it.

Soon after, the Gators won the Orange Bowl. National headlines began declaring Gatorade their secret elixir. Here’s a gem from the Florida Times-Union: “One Lil’ Swig of That Kickapoo Juice and Biff, Bam, Sock — It’s Gators, 8-2.”

In ‘67, a distributor picked it up, and the rest’s history – a history Gatorade’s used in its marketing for 50 years.

The tale lends authority and authenticity, even though the market’s now flooded with competitors, and some of the original science is debated.