Gatorade is moving social media to the forefront of its marketing efforts. The sports drink unit of Pepsi Co. has built a Mission Control Center at its headquarters in Chicago, where it can monitor the status of its brand over social networks, Adam Ostrow writes in a post at Mashable.

The Mission Control Center contains six large-screen monitors, which provide visual depictions of online activity related to the brand. One monitor shows depictions of tweets that contain terms relevant to Gatorade, its competitors, athletes and sports nutrition. Another offers a view of blog conversations about numerous subjects. Marketers are able to analyze the sentiment surrounding important subjects, as well as their products and campaigns.

When the company launched the "Gatorade has evolved" campaign, it discovered that a commercial playing a song by rapper David Banner captured a lot of attention on social networks. The marketing team responded by sending a full-length version of the song to Gatorade's Facebook Fans and Twitter followers.

For more:
- see Adam Ostrow's post at Mashable

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