Because we’re lame enough to do so, we got all excited this morning about a release from the folks over at Power Bar that they had developed a “beverage system” for extreme athletes. Not that we like Power Bars, mind you, but we do like strong brands and Power Bar has shown a lot of staying power.
But it turns out that the beverage system is a powder; that’s too bad, because something like Power Bar is a real threat to the Gatorade juggernaut, which, we’ve made it clear in other writing, can only be toppled from outside the sports drink category.
We don’t think Power Bar could do that toppling on its own, but it presents an interesting idea: a brand that has credibility among performance athletes and armchair athletes alike (much like Gatorade itself) moving to a sports drink platform might be the most easily conceived Gatorade competitor.
The fact is, the sports drink category, which has grown fast and furious because of Gatorade’s popularity, is in need of a shakeup, and most of the competition out there either isn’t well-funded, or tends to rely on nerdy studies that lose the typical Gatorade drinker’s attention after the first sentence.
We think vitaminwater perform has a solid shot at peeling off some of Gatorade’s market share at some point, because it’s a powerful brand that overlaps many Gatorade consumers. But Power Bars are even closer to that demographic. If they made a strong move to the hoop, we’d watch it closely.
