How Gatorade ran it back to ’98 with #Game6Live

In a year marked by postponed sports seasons, the biggest sports cultural event wasn’t a championship series. It was ESPN’s The Last Dance, which rekindled the world’s love affair with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

The success of The Last Dance also presented an opportunity for Gatorade. Its “Be Like Mike” ad campaign of the 1990s forever made Gatorade synonymous with “His Airness.”

Gatorade was not an official sponsor of “The Last Dance,” So how could the brand connect to the show’s phenomenon to drive relevance among sports fans?

To create a basketball watch party like no other, the NBA and Gatorade invited fans to watch the #Game6Live livestream on the Live Event Page with basketball superstars — and Gatorade partners — Sue Bird and Zach Lavine. Gatorade and the NBA also turned up the 1990s vibes by tabbing, the original sideline reporter of the 1998 NBA finals, to co-host the livestream from his handle @NBATVAhmad.

As Gatorade would find out, reliving the 1998 NBA Finals more than made up for the absence of live sports for sports fans. In fact, #Game6Live outperformed similar livestreams, bringing it 3.2x more views on the Live Event Page. The livestream also had 5x higher mention volume during the campaign compared to three days prior. Overall, the campaign scored a 96% positive-to-neutral sentiment.

“At the end of the ‘Last Dance’ documentary, we partnered with the NBA to re-air Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals live on Twitter and lean into one more bit of engaging content that our athletes and NBA fans could really get excited about. The activation itself was watching the game live, but then we went one step further and engaged with former players and sportscasters to create a conversation around Game 6 Live all aggregated under a custom hashtag with a Gatorade emoji. We were thrilled with the end result.” Jill Abbott (@JillSeibs), Head of Consumer and Athlete Engagement, Gatorade.