{"id":805861,"date":"2024-05-29T12:12:04","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T16:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=805861"},"modified":"2024-05-29T12:17:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T16:17:23","slug":"aja-wilson-stars-in-gatorade-commercial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wnba\/aja-wilson-stars-in-gatorade-commercial\/","title":{"rendered":"A&#8217;ja Wilson Takes Us Behind The Scenes of Gatorade&#8217;s &#8220;Is It In You&#8221; Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There are times when the game becomes a battle of will, and you either have it in you or you don\u2019t. But A\u2019ja Wilson didn\u2019t work this hard just to get <em>this <\/em>far. Even as a two-time WNBA Champion, there\u2019s still more to do, more to accomplish, more to win, more to work toward.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She\u2019s been faced with the same question that fuels Gatorade\u2019s latest campaign, one that calls back to the heyday of the brand when Michael Jordan was drinking Citrus Cooler Gatorade from glass bottles. She\u2019s been tested, pushed and proven. She\u2019s come out on top, built a dynasty and become an icon. Those tests resonate deeply with A\u2019ja\u2019s journey, those moments of clarity when you have to choose; dig deeper or be satisfied. And A\u2019ja Wilson is never satisfied.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She points to the 2023 WNBA Finals as proof of the latter. \u201cI think this past championship was something where <em>IT<\/em> was really tested a lot. You either got it, or you don\u2019t. Your preparation sets you up for this moment,\u201d Wilson tells SLAM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That perspective was evident in mid-April when she was shooting the commercial that\u2019s being rolled out as you\u2019re reading this. Throwing it back to the late 90s, Gatorade has revived its \u201cIs It In You?\u201d campaign with a 60-second spot featuring A\u2019ja alongside the brand\u2019s elite athlete roster.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Gatorade | IT HASN\u2019T CHANGED\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pqoFMwXjcsY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When the brand presented her with the marketing deck that encapsulated the vibes and energy of the revised concept, A\u2019ja was more than hyped. She felt connected.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t even voice to you how I\u2019m so excited that we\u2019re taking it back to the vintage, like the old school, the ones that we really grew up on,\u201d Wilson tells SLAM. \u201cBeing a 90s kid, growing up and seeing MJ, seeing all the other athletes, and now to finally be in it and be a part of a commercial that I used to watch, and now I\u2019m going to be a part of the family as a whole, it\u2019s been super exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We got the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wnba\/exclusive-aja-wilson-signs-with-gatorade\/\">exclusive<\/a> that A\u2019ja was joining Gatorade\u2019s elite roster in early May. With the brand\u2019s history of fueling athletes for decades, Wilson wants to showcase the personable side of herself and her fellow athletes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI think when you look at this roster and you look at the things that we do with Gatorade, it\u2019s kind of like \u2018yeah we grew up on this, but really we <em>grew up <\/em>on this. We really became adults on this one beverage and now here we are reppin\u2019 it and it\u2019s just truly amazing,\u201d A\u2019ja tells SLAM. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people that see our roster and see the accolades and are like, oh my god they\u2019re the elite of the elite. But they may not see we have whole humans that navigate through the world. So yeah, just to see that human side of it, the kid side of it, the tweets of A\u2019ja, like no, they\u2019re still human at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s been nearly 30 years since Gatorade highlighted the <em>IT <\/em>within their athletes. As the landscape has changed, so has the brand\u2019s mission for its modernized campaign. Today\u2019s athlete journeys through a barrage of external pressures and expectations; from social media to finding the perfect team or training situation in an ecosystem filled with endless opportunities.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For A\u2019ja, her authenticity as an athlete\u2014and a Black woman\u2014is ever-present. It\u2019s what anchors her to her why. She\u2019s truthful, hilarious, and unapologetically herself. Through the years, she\u2019s navigated these moments with both grace and dominance. Her will has been tested, questioned and praised, and as she explains her mindset and how she focuses on the constructive, the Las Vegas Aces\u2019 team slogan from last season reemerges.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Stay Poised Through the Noise.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t really escape it, it\u2019s always going to be there. But the difference between good and great is how you can manage that noise, how you can stay poised through it,\u201d A\u2019ja explains. \u201cWhat do you do in those moments? How can you be really in tune with yourself? And I think that\u2019s so key even when it comes to Gatorade. You have to be inside yourself, good and centered at where you are so then you can project that out to everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Photos via Gatorade.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are times when the game becomes a battle of will, and you either have it in you or you don\u2019t. But A\u2019ja Wilson didn\u2019t work this hard just to get this far. Even as a two-time WNBA Champion, there\u2019s still more to do, more to accomplish, more to win, more to work toward.\u00a0 She\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":448,"featured_media":805862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[11149,2091,49801,1863,63726,63727],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-805861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wnba","tag-aja-wilson","tag-gatorade","tag-las-vegas-aces","tag-wnba","tag-wslam","tag-wslam-001"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805861"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805874,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805861\/revisions\/805874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805861"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=805861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}