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Hello Creative Souls, |
Most brands talk about mental health the same way: |
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Then the industry goes back to treating athletes like machines with legs, Powerade did something different. Powerade’s Athletes Code is interesting because the document it starts with is not a pitchdeck or a script, but a contract. |
 | Powerade - The Athletes Code (case study) |
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On the surface, it looks like standard cause marketing: famous athletes, emotional stories, big reach. |
Under the hood, it’s something else: a legal intervention disguised as advertising. |
Instead of asking the sports world to care about athlete mental health, Powerade did something far more uncomfortable and useful: |
They actually got their hands dirty and did the hard work of changing the rules. |
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So what did they actually do? |
In 2024, Powerade introduced The Athletes Code. |
They added a new clause to their sponsorship agreements that says, in plain effect: |
“If you need to pause your professional commitments for mental health reasons, you can.
You won’t lose your sponsorship for doing it.” |
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That’s it. No asterisk. No “subject to approval”.
A right, not a favour. |
Around that clause, they built the visible “campaign”: |
athletes like Alex Morgan talking honestly about pressure and burnout a film that shows what it means to actually stop messaging under their platform: Pause is Power
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766 million people reached, industry conversations kicked off, other brands suddenly looking at their own contracts and thinking: “Uh… we should probably do something.” |
But the important bit is still that line in the contract.
That’s the part that will still matter when the case study decks are forgotten. |
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Why this hits different |
Most behaviour-change work is trying to move people from: |
“I don’t really think about this,”
to
“Now I see why this matters.” |
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That’s hard, slow, and fragile. One bad headline and everyone’s “over it.” |
Powerade skipped that whole dance and moved straight to: |
“This already matters. So we’ve encoded it into how we do business.” |
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That’s a very different psychological move. |
When something sits in: |
a contract a policy an operating rule
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it starts being the new normal. It forces change. |
Athletes don’t have to negotiate for compassion every time they struggle.
They can point to a document. |
Fans don’t have to argue whether mental health is a “valid reason” to step away.
The sponsor has already said: it is. |
And once a brand of Powerade’s size does it, it quietly creates a new question for everyone else in the space: |
“Why don’t you offer this?” |
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That’s how norms shift. Not from a single powerful message,
but from one structural decision that makes everyone else look outdated. |
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This is about structure, not sentiment |
The clever part of Athletes Code isn’t emotional storytelling (though that helps).
It’s understanding where real leverage lives. |
You can: |
spend millions shooting a film about mental health, or you can insert one paragraph into every sponsorship deal you sign.
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One is vibes and messaging.
The other is infrastructure. |
The film makes you feel something for two minutes.
The clause protects someone for years. |
That’s the uncomfortable truth for a lot of marketers: |
sometimes the most powerful creative decision you can make is… legal. |
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A re-write of how your brand operates outdoes a thousand rewrites of every run-of-the-mill awareness script any day. |
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How you steal this (without being Powerade) |
You may not be able to rewrite global sponsorship contracts tomorrow, but the shape of the move is repeatable: |
Pick an issue you keep “campaigning” about
(fair pay, work-life balance, sustainability, representation, safety, whatever). Ask: Where can this live in a rule instead of a mood?
A hiring policy. A refund policy. A creator contract. A feature. A T&C. A workplace policy. Make one change that turns a “nice belief” into a guarantee.
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Then, and only then, tell the story. |
The story isn’t the change.
The story is proof the change exists. |
That’s the Powerade play: structure first, storytelling second. |
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The real lesson |
If you want to change culture, don’t start with trying to change minds. |
Start with what you control directly: |
a clause a rule a process a default
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Because culture follows structure much more often than structure follows culture. |
One line in a contract did more for athlete mental health than yet another “We stand with athletes” post ever could. |
My favourite line from the whole Athletes Code work is an athlete saying: |
“Unwavering support like that is all I’ve ever wanted.” |
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Read that again with your “brand builder” hat off and your “human” hat on. |
That’s what most people want from institutions in their lives — not campaigns, not sympathy, not inspirational copy. |
Just: “When it matters, will the system hold me… or drop me?” |
Powerade used its power to quietly change the answer to that question. |
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Since this issue is about mental health, we have decided to give a shoutout to another newsletter written by our own Guru Nicketan. If you follow it, you will be able to build reliable work systems that protect your ADHD/AuDHD career without the burnout. |
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