The Lucozade Sport advertising campaign from 2013 aimed to promote Lucozade as a better sports drink than water. It featured a £4-9 million TV ad that showed athletes performing better when fueled by Lucozade instead of water. The ad starred soccer players Gareth Bale and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and was banned in 2014 for making unsupported performance claims. The campaign relied heavily on celebrity endorsements and social media to target a young, health-conscious demographic. It represented males as strong athletes and promoted an ideal world where everyone chooses Lucozade over other drinks.

1. Lucozade Sport
Soft Drinks advertising

4. Lucozade Sport Research Task
Research the Lucozade Sport Advertising Campaign ‘I Believe’ from 2013
Create a presentation of your findings
Images may be copy and pasted (include urls), but all
text must be in your own words
Points to cover
History of the brand
Aims of the campaign
Dates and times of the campaign
Use of social media
Choose another Lucozade campaign
and summarise the campaign
Include
embedded images and videos
Urls of sites used for research

5. Context
Look at the vintage ads from Lucozade.
How has advertising for Lucozade changed?
The new adverts for Lucozade have a lot more colour, which makes them stand out a lot
more. The dull colours would not have caught the eye of potential customers. On the old
adverts, they have used either drawings, cartoons or an unknown individual on the
poster, where as on the modern posters, they have used celebrity's such as Gareth Bale
and other well known sports people as the customers can identify with the advert, which
would make them more inclined to buy them if they are fans of the celebrities promoting
Lucozade. In the old adverts, there is a lot of writing in a large font which could make the
audience feel like they don’t want to read the advert.

9. 1998
Starter
Watch this advert. What
techniques does it use to sell
Lucozade?
In the advert they relate to
multiple demographics;
motorbikers, young men, and
mothers. They use the
technique of making the
audience believe that having
Lucozade gives energy to be
able to keep up with everyone
else.

10. Lucozade - context
Created 1927 as Glucozade - meant to give energy to the sick. Was
renamed Lucozade in 1929. In 1983 it was rebranded as a sports drink
rather than health drink. Now they have lots of sponsorship deals with
various sports.

11. Lucozade Sport Campaign
Lucozade Sport is its No1 sports drink
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d08zaoMMhWA
TV campaign ‘Last Man Standing’ launched in Jan 2013 on ITV during the FA
Cup matches between Brighton and Hove Albion and Newcastle as well as
West Ham v Manchester United.
New scientific claim: Lucozade Sport hydrates and fuels you better than water.
Set in laboratory conditions, twenty four athletes go head to head in a
performance challenge - half fuelled by Lucozade Sport and half by water.
Monitored throughout by GSK scientists, the athletes run until they reach the
point of exhaustion and only participants on one team, fuelled by Lucozade
Sport, are left.

12. Campaign
£4m or £9m campaign - both claims made online. (exam board specification
thinks £4m)
Agency: Grey London
GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare - owners of Lucozade in Jan 2013
Lucozade sold to Suntory in Sept 2013 for £1.35b
Ad stars: Gareth Bale (Spurs) and Alex Oxlade Chamberlain (Arsenal)
Campaign banned in Jan 2014 by ASA as it failed to show that it only had benefit
during prolonged exercise.

13. The TV ad:

15. Media Language:
•Colour
•Type of shot
•Angle
•Focus
•Depth of field
•Mise-en-scene
•Realism?
•Narrative?
•Use of text/copy
•Font design/size
•Layout
Representation:
•Who/What is seen?
•How are they represented?
• DRCAGES
• Themes/Messages
Audience:
•Who is the target audience for
this advertisement
•How do we know?
•What might other audiences
make of it?
•How is the audience
addressed/attracted?
• How are values transferred?
Analysing print adverts
What do we analyse?
TASK:
Analyse the Gareth Bale ad by
annotation
Remember:
● Terminology
● Connotation
Extension: Theory

16. Well known
celebrity (mid
front shot) – So
that people are
more interested
and can relate
with the advert.
Use of a hashtag –
relates to a
younger
demographic and
is free
advertisement.
Makes people feel it is good for
you – Sports people will buy it.
Makes it seem like the best drink – not
completely true, false advertisement but
makes people want to try it.
‘you’ –
directly
relates to the
audience
making
people feel
involved.
A lot of writing –
makes it seem
more legit to the
target audience.
But can put
people off looking
at the advert.
Yellow box (mast head)
– stands out on the blue
background, people are
more likely to read it.
Information
about the
celebrity –
people are able
to relate.

17. Analysing the Advert
●Aim of the print advert?
Persuading people that Lucozade is better than water.
●Media language (mediation) Go back to the Calvin Klein
notes/slide
●Representation of males – all men are strong sportsmen
●Representation of the brand – it’s the best drink you can
get.
●Psychology, which human needs is it satisfying – makes
you feel better as it is ‘healthy’.
●Is there an ideal world that is being represented? –
everyone drinks Lucozade and not water.
●What is the main selling point? Message? What does it
want you to believe? – wants you to believe that Lucozade
is better than water. The main selling point is getting
athletes to believe water is better.

22. Social ContextSocial Anxieties
The athletic and muscular bodies represent
the male obsession with their body image thus
attributing a certain body insecurity to the
target audience.
Using a strong man shows that there is some
kind of inequality, as they could have used a
strong woman, or a man and woman to show
that it works for everyone. It also makes
people feel uncomfortable with their body, it
was made as medicine so should be for
anyone.
Inequalities (race)
Range of representations?
Using a man as the main face for the
advertisement of Lucozade makes it seem
unequal for genders, also there is only one
representation presented as it is only strong
sports people. There are multi races
represented.
Inequalities (gender)
• Representing both genders?
• https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/v
ideos/1010852939056213/
OR
https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/890122280
361000960
Only one gender is represented, but in the
article they want to stop gender stereotypes
that come with sports.

23. Cultural Context
What do these terms mean and how are they applied?
Consumerism
The total value of the soft drinks market in
the United Kingdom (UK) is around £15
billion.
Having a large consumerism means that they
have a high percentage of sales, meaning
high profits. But it also means that it is free
advertisement so people will see other
people drinking it and want to drink it.
Celebrity Culture
Capitalising on star appeal / star as
commodity.
Because they use a celebrity to promote the
product, it makes people think that they
drink it so therefore fans of the celebrities
will also want to drink it to ‘be like them’.
Postmodernism
Gareth Bale use of celebrity
Representation of man ‘new man’
Using a strong man representation, of a well
known celebrity makes people relate to
them, but also they could use someone who
is not strong as it creates a stereotype.

24. Choose 3 drink soft ads

25. ●Open a word doc
●Find 3 soft drink adverts
●Add them and Lucozade to the word doc
●Now write down the generic codes and
conventions of soft drink adverts like we did
for perfume adverts

26. 3 Soft Drink Adverts:
Codes and conventions of soft drink adverts:
• Product dominant, centre
• Actions, using product
• Bright colours
• Match brand
• Lack of text
• Slogan
• Logo
• Use of Caucasian
• Positive mode of address / sense of humour