THE THINKING.

Gatorade has been fuelling athletes for decades. We’re not just talking about the orange liquid in the bottle, but the support and guidance required for athletes to perform at their best.

In that time, women’s football has grown immensely and women are finally starting to be recognised for, and treated as, the incredible ballers they are.

With all that being said, we say that 45% of teenage girls drop out of sport which is twice the rate that boys do. Digging deeper we found that 40% of girls say they lack confidence in sport.

Additional research showed that it wasn’t that they never had confidence to begin with, but all of the additional barriers that are specific to girls severely impacted it (e.g. lack of female coaches, social media scrutiny, lack of role models, etc.). 

The strategy and long-term ambition became clear, we wanted to ensure that confidence isn’t something girls grow out of, but something they grow into - continuously benefitting from the transformational power of sport. We found the perfect partner to embody this ambition.

Rachel Yankey OBE is an Arsenal and England legend. Whilst playing, she won numerous trophies and became the most capped player ever to play for England, ahead of male goalkeeper Peter Shilton (this record has since been beaten). 

But her road to success was far from easy. Growing up there weren’t any girls teams for her to join so she had to cut off her hair and go as Ray (an acronym of her full name) in order to play football with the boys team - from which she was dropped once a few parents found out - however, none of this stopped her from achieving her dreams. 

We wanted to capture that 9-year-old’s spirit and resilience to help support and inspire girls around the world. With the help of AI-fueled de-aging technology, we brought Ray back to life for a meaningful conversation about her story and what it takes to never grow out of your confidence.

The film not only featured Ray in conversation with Rachel Yankey, but also introduced a group of aspiring female footballers - drawing a parallel between their cross-generational experience. We launched the film across social and digital, but that was only the start. The film directed to Gatorade's Confidence Coaches Hub, offering resources to help young athletes maintain their confidence.

To continue the conversation, we integrated everything with Gatorade’s other ‘Fuel Tomorrow’ initiatives - bringing Ray and Rachel together with Laia Aleixandri (current Manchester City and Spain International) and Fernando Llorente (former Athletic Bilbao and Spain International) to talk about how to keep confidence high at the final of the Gatorade 5v5 tournament at the UEFA's Women's Champions League finals in Bilbao. 

The initiative generated global appeal, significantly elevating Gatorade's brand visibility and engagement. We achieved almost 3 billion earned media impressions and the hero film alone garnered 27.9 million views through earned coverage. The campaign's social media reach extended to 76.5 million and the trade coverage contributed an additional 700,000 in reach, with the campaign being featured in a total of 4,864 articles across various media outlets. 

More importantly, beyond these numbers, the campaign drove meaningful conversations about the importance of confidence for young female athletes, reinforcing Gatorade's commitment to empowering the next generation and helping 2.5 million teens worldwide access the transformative power of sport by 2030.