During last night’s MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), the newest Beyoncé video dropped. Sort of. While it was directed by Jake Nava, the same person who helmed “Crazy In Love” and “Single Ladies,” this was no ordinary music video. It was a Gatorade ad and tribute to the career and legacy of Beyoncé’s good friend Serena Williams, before the tennis legend takes the court at her last U.S. Open.
Today, the brand dropped a 110-second extended version of the spot “Love Means Everything,” created with agency TBWA\Chiat\Day LA.
In a statement, Gatorade CMO Kalen Thornton said, “As a long-standing member of the Gatorade Family, ‘Love Means Everything’ celebrates the movement of empowerment and love Serena embodies as she continues to inspire the next generation.”
Since 2009, Serena Williams has been sponsored by Gatorade and starred in a laundry list of top ads for the brand. The first that comes to mind immediately are 2015’s “Unmatched,” featuring interview footage of an 11-year-old Williams, already determined to be a new style of superstar.
In 2016, Gatorade made the first multilevel video game playable on Snapchat with “Serena Williams Match Point,” an eight-bit-style video game that took players through 22 levels of tennis, one for every Grand Slam singles title Williams had won up to that point.
And in 2017, Williams starred in an ode to her then-newborn daughter in “Sisters in Sweat.”
While it’s definitely premature to claim this the swan song of Williams’s Gatorade commercial career, this new Beyoncé tribute certainly adds to her now-legendary advertising collection.
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