Kobe Bryant's new ad for BodyArmor Super Drink is taking aim at the biggest name in the game. The commercial written and directed by the ex-baller ends with the tagline "Thanks Gatorade. We'll take it from here." The ad campaign will be centered on four individual narratives all involving high-performance ditching "old habits" for new ones.
The first commercial which come to light stars New York Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis struggling to send his parents a letter by pigeon carrion, the brunt of the joke being the inconvenience of the journey to Latvia, under seven thousand klicks and counting. A frustrated Kristaps turns to the camera and a voice-over joins in to declare that he wouldn't "choose an outdated sports drink" either. The voice-over then explains BodyArmor's leg-up on the competition with two arguable points. The next three ad campaigns will feature former AL MVP Mike Trout, and basketball stars James Harden and Skylar Diggis, in a similar vein.
BodyArmor founder and CEO Mike Repole is no stranger to making a splash in the specialty food industry. He made a cool $4 billion in selling parent company Glaceau to Coca-Cola. He described his partnership with Kobe Bryant as much more than an athletic endorsement:
"When I teamed up with Kobe, I thought I was getting an elite basketball player with great vision, I wound up with an Oscar winner who has his fingerprints all over our creative that we deeply benefited from. He invested his money to be part of the brand versus an endorsement deal. He was in when we had 20 million in sales, so consider him a co-founder."
Watch Porzingis go to town on his Papercraft typewriter.
https://twitter.com/_/status/986579972025454592
