Cultural Environment

The cultural environment, defined as “institutions and other forces that affect a societies basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors,” is one of the many forces that affect “marketing management's ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers”(Pg. 85, Pg. 65). In Gatorade's “Lock it Up” commercial, Gatorade utilizes the current cultural environment to target a core customer segment. Let us assume that Gatorade is targeting to active young adults. In the past decade, society has seen a growth in popularity of MTV, hip-hop music, and the “gansta” lifestyle in the young adult demographic. The commercial targets this demographic by combining the usual Gatorade advertisement, focusing on elite athletes performing at their best, with clips of JabbaWockeeZ, a dance crew from MTV’s “America’s Best Dance Crew,” clips of individual young athletes from basketball players to skateboarders and clips of professional athletes just having fun. The commercial ends with the new ad campaign’s slogan “That’s G.” G in this case can mean Gatorade, but it also implies a certain amount of ‘hipness’ that comes from being ‘gangsta.’ Gatorade noticed the cultural change that occurred in the minds of their target market and created an advertising campaign catering hip, fast paced commercials towards their target consumer. The use of cultural environment helped Gatorade introduce a campaign that both reached consumers, and did it in a memorable way.



Maddie Foutch, Section E