Research showed people believed cricketers weren’t elite athletes, and thus didn’t require Gatorade’s hydration to perform at their peak.

To change the false perception, we created The Bolt Rate, a brand new televised statistic, that harnessed Catapult GPS technology to measure player run speed between the wickets. Unlike traditional cricket stats, the Bolt Rate focused purely on explosive performance – highlighting the elite athleticism of cricketers, and thus, their need for hydration.

To launch the Bolt Rate, we recruited the planet’s fastest athlete and die-hard cricket fan, Usain Bolt, who trained the Australian Cricket team to improve their run speed ahead of their upcoming Ashes series against England.

When the series started, the Bolt Rate became integrated into live broadcast, letting fans and commentators track and compare run speed data of their favourite players live at The Ashes and beyond.

To launch our never-before-seen metric, we recruited the planet’s fastest athlete and die-hard cricket fan, Usain Bolt, as the new speed coach for the Australian cricket team, training them to improve their Bolt Rate ahead of the upcoming Ashes series.

Content of Usain’s secret training session with the Australian team was leaked to key media outlets, spreading like wildfire overnight.

When the Ashes started the following week, the Bolt Rate became integrated into live broadcast, with commentators, media and fans discussing player run speed throughout the series.

A live leaderboard hosted on Cricket Australia’s website was constantly updated with the fastest run speed data, letting the world track their favourite player’s performance in real time.

Finally, we created a Gatorade branded ‘Fastest Man of the Match Award’ to be presented to The Ashes’ fastest player by Usain himself, helping fuel competition between players and discussion between fans of the game.

By signing the world’s fastest speed coach and broadcasting a game-changing stat during live matches, we demonstrated the importance of Gatorade for achieving peak athletic performance, helping insert them firmly into the sport’s culture, making Gatorade more relevant to the game of cricket than ever before.

The stats on our stat say it all:

- Over 500 pieces of editorial globally including mainstream media such as Fairfax, News Corp, Channel 9 News, Today Show and the front page of The Sun’s sport section.

- Global reach of over 200 million

- 75% brand engagement compared to 20% competitor average

- 63% athletic credibility compared to 27% competitor average

- 69% brand recall compared to 19% competitor average

- The Bolt Rate launch film attracted over 2.5million views and over 15,000 post reactions.