Gatorade Turns Son Heung-min's World Cup Anguish Into a Brand Anthem
Gatorade's 'Despair or Joy' is a 2025 South Korean film campaign created by INNORED for PepsiCo Korea that uses Son Heung-min's real emotional experience during South Korea's 2022 FIFA World Cup group-stage match against Portugal to dramatise perseverance under the brand's long-running 'Is It In You?' athlete-performance platform, according to Campaignbriefasia.
The campaign launched on April 25, 2025, according to reporting by Mission Media Asia and confirmed through Clapboard's archive, making it one of the first major non-alcoholic drinks brand activations in South Korea to centre an entire narrative on a single, historically documented athletic moment, according to Coa World. Rather than constructing a fictional heroic scenario, INNORED anchored the creative in documented fact: Son Heung-min competed in that December 2, 2022 match wearing a protective mask over an orbital fracture, a detail that lends the film an authenticity that staged athletic imagery rarely achieves, according to Missionmedia Asia.
In South Korea, where Son Heung-min occupies a position of genuine national reverence, the decision to revisit that World Cup match carries cultural weight well beyond sport. The film moves chronologically from the despair of a difficult opening to the collective joy of victory, using this emotional arc as a direct metaphor for what Gatorade argues is already inside every athlete. The campaign was released across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify, per Mission Media Asia, with additional versions featuring other sports-star collaborations and relay interviews planned for subsequent phases. The 'Is It In You?' platform, which Gatorade has sustained globally across multiple decades, here finds renewed local resonance by grounding a universal theme in a moment South Korean audiences lived through in real time.
INNORED identified a specific strategic opening in South Korea's non-alcoholic drinks landscape. The agency's insight is rooted in the understanding that South Korean sports consumers do not merely follow Son Heung-min's career — they experienced his 2022 World Cup campaign collectively and emotionally, as a national event. By building a Gatorade film around that shared memory rather than around abstract athletic aspiration, INNORED positioned the brand inside an existing emotional community rather than asking audiences to join a new one.
The global sports-drink market provides context for the ambition behind this localised strategy. According to Grand View Research, the global sports-drink market is estimated at approximately $27.7 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.7% projected through 2033. Straits Research places the 2025 figure at $28.37 billion, with a 5.15% CAGR through 2034. These figures reflect a category growing steadily in both developed and emerging markets, and South Korea's premium consumer culture makes it a meaningful target within the Asia-Pacific segment. Gatorade, operating as a PepsiCo brand, competes directly in this category against Pocari Sweat, which holds strong brand equity across South Korea and broader East Asia through decades of localised marketing investment, and against Powerade, The Coca-Cola Company's primary sports-drink entry. Both competitors have historically relied on functional messaging and broad athletic imagery. Gatorade's choice to anchor its 2025 South Korean campaign in a specific, emotionally charged national sporting memory represents a distinct positioning move — one that trades category-generic performance claims for something closer to cultural ownership. The 'Is It In You?' line, reactivated here, sharpens that positioning by directing the emotional resonance inward, toward the athlete's own character rather than the product's formula.
INNORED built 'Despair or Joy' around a structural principle that is straightforward in concept and demanding in execution: recreate the emotional texture of a real, high-stakes moment without reducing it to highlight-reel nostalgia. The film traces the arc of South Korea's 2022 FIFA World Cup group-stage match against Portugal — from early pressure and the weight of possible elimination to the relief and collective joy of progression — using Son Heung-min as both subject and narrator of that interior experience.
The creative decision to incorporate Son's orbital fracture and protective mask into the narrative is significant from a craft perspective. That detail transforms the film from a celebration of victory into something more honest: a portrait of an athlete continuing under conditions of pain and uncertainty, which is precisely the territory the 'Is It In You?' platform is designed to occupy. According to Mission Media Asia and reporting aligned with Innored Co Kr's documented output, the campaign was released in three distinct versions, with additional athlete collaborations and relay interview formats planned for later phases — a structure that suggests INNORED designed the campaign as a content system rather than a single-execution broadcast spot.
The film was distributed across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify, per Mission Media Asia, a platform mix that reflects the fragmented media behaviour of South Korean sports audiences in 2025, particularly among the younger demographics most active on short-form and streaming platforms. Production credits for 'Despair or Joy' are not publicly documented in available trade sources. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 66 out of 100, a result that reflects competent emotional construction and strong cultural relevance while suggesting that the execution does not fully resolve the tension between documentary authenticity and branded storytelling — a challenge inherent to any campaign built on real events involving a living public figure.
No verified performance data for 'Despair or Joy' is publicly available at the time of this analysis. The campaign launched on April 25, 2025, per Mission Media Asia, and trade coverage indexed through Clapboard and Campaign Brief Asia does not yet include audience reach figures, view counts, or brand-lift metrics. This is consistent with the early-stage reporting window for a campaign submitted to Clapboard's archive approximately one month after launch.
Structural analysis offers a more immediate basis for evaluation. The campaign's core asset — the emotional testimony of South Korea's most recognised active footballer, built around a moment millions of South Korean viewers remember personally — creates conditions for high organic amplification, particularly on YouTube and TikTok where sports-adjacent emotional content consistently generates extended engagement in the South Korean market. The three-version release structure identified by Mission Media Asia also extends the campaign's effective lifespan beyond a single broadcast moment, allowing subsequent athlete collaborations and relay interviews to sustain platform presence across weeks rather than days.
The reactivation of 'Is It In You?' as the campaign's organising line gives Gatorade a retrievable brand signal across what is designed as an ongoing content series — a structural advantage over one-off executions in a category where Pocari Sweat and Powerade maintain persistent brand presence through continuous local investment. Whether the campaign translates structural opportunity into measurable commercial or brand-equity outcomes in South Korea will depend on the scope of media investment and the quality of the athlete collaborations planned for later phases, neither of which has been publicly confirmed. Clapboard scores this campaign 66 out of 100.
'Despair or Joy' is a 2025 Gatorade film created by INNORED for the South Korean market. It depicts Son Heung-min's emotional experience during South Korea's 2022 FIFA World Cup match against Portugal, moving from despair to collective joy as a metaphor for perseverance under the brand's 'Is It In You?' platform.
INNORED, a South Korean advertising agency, created 'Despair or Joy' for PepsiCo Korea. The campaign was released on April 25, 2025, according to Mission Media Asia, and distributed across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify in multiple versions with further athlete collaborations planned.
Son Heung-min competed in South Korea's 2022 FIFA World Cup match against Portugal wearing a protective mask over an orbital fracture. INNORED incorporated this documented detail into the film to ground Gatorade's 'Is It In You?' platform in authentic athletic hardship rather than staged heroism, per reporting from Mission Media Asia.
Gatorade's 'Is It In You?' is a long-running global athlete-performance platform. 'Despair or Joy' reactivates it for the South Korean market in 2025 by connecting the line to Son Heung-min's real experience of persevering through pain and doubt during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, according to Clapboard's campaign archive.
Gatorade's 'Despair or Joy' positions the brand through cultural memory rather than functional claims, differentiating it from competitors Pocari Sweat and Powerade, which maintain broad athletic imagery in South Korea. By anchoring the 2025 campaign in a nationally shared World Cup moment, INNORED pursues emotional ownership of the sports-drink category.
Gatorade's 'Despair or Joy' received a Clapboard Score of 66 out of 100. The score reflects competent emotional construction and strong cultural relevance within the South Korean market while indicating that the campaign does not fully resolve the tension between documentary authenticity and branded storytelling that is inherent to real-event-based advertising.
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