Quaker Oats, a regional launch and a national rollout two years later.

Propel is an American brand of lightly flavoured bottled water sold under the Gatorade banner. It began not at PepsiCo but at the Quaker Oats Company, which owned Gatorade at the time. In its results for the third quarter of 2000, reproduced by just-food on 20 October 2000, Quaker said its beverage spending included the regional launch of Propel fitness water in the United States, along with new multi-packs of Gatorade. Quaker’s chief executive, Robert Morrison, described a “progressive launch” of Propel that widened its availability across the country over the course of that season.

The national launch followed. Nutraceuticals World reported on 1 March 2002 that Gatorade, a division of Quaker Oats based in Chicago, had gone national with Propel Fitness Water. The magazine said shipping had begun in January and that the drink was expected to reach grocery stores, mass merchants, convenience stores and warehouse clubs throughout the United States by April. It described Propel as a lightly flavoured, non-carbonated purified water. In the same report the magazine noted that the Snapple Beverage Group had answered with a line of waters of its own, called Snapple Elements.

PepsiCo’s consumer site for Propel says it was created by The Gatorade Company in 2002, and English Wikipedia, citing that page, gives the same year. PepsiCo’s in-house design group, PepsiCo Design + Innovation, says in a case study that Propel was developed in consultation with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute in 2000. Fast Company, writing in February 2023, also dated the launch to 2000.

By the time Propel went national it had a new parent. FoodNavigator reported on 3 August 2001 that PepsiCo had announced the day before that it had completed its merger with The Quaker Oats Company. Gatorade, and with it Propel, came under PepsiCo through that deal; Marketing Dive described Gatorade in 2023 as a division of PepsiCo and Propel as a Gatorade-manufactured product. PepsiCo has owned the brand, through Gatorade, since 2001.

The early marketing called the drink a fitness water. In October 2005 the Gatorade Company announced an extension of the range in a release republished by Wastewater Digest, and Convenience Store News covered the same launch in November 2005, listing the Gatorade Company in Chicago as the maker. Both reports used the full name Propel Fitness Water, which stayed on the brand into the 2020s.

A slimmer bottle, a fitness festival and a place in the Gatorade portfolio.

The packaging was redrawn in 2009. Packaging World reported on 15 June 2009 that PepsiCo had introduced a lighter bottle for Propel, designed by 4sight Inc., a structural branding and packaging firm. The magazine described a slim, flowing shape with a sport grip, intended to carry the brand message “Life Propelled,” and said the bottle used less plastic and less label material than the one it replaced. To appeal to what the magazine called the brand’s core female consumer, the opening was made smaller. Stuart Leslie, the president of 4sight, said the firm had used “swooping lines of varying thicknesses” to suggest water in motion with a sense of energy.

Marketing moved towards fitness events. Business Insider reported on 21 October 2020 that for years people in cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Miami had signed up for workout sessions at Co:Labs, an event hosted by Propel, and that PepsiCo had marketed the drink for two decades as Gatorade’s younger sibling. In 2020 the event moved to Instagram, with stretches, barre and dance classes. Anuj Bhasin, then the PepsiCo vice president responsible for Gatorade, protein and fitness brands, told the publication that sales of powdered Propel, mixed by the drinker into water, had taken off in the previous six months, and that the brand planned a branded water bottle designed for its powders.

In 2023 PepsiCo pulled its sports and fitness drinks together. Fast Company reported on 10 February 2023 that the company was using the Super Bowl to announce that Gatorade, Fast Twitch, Muscle Milk, Propel and Evolve would sit under the Gatorade umbrella in a new brand portfolio. “This is all about bringing these brands together to go from just a sports drink to a fully connected ecosystem,” said Mike Del Pozzo, president and general manager of the Gatorade Portfolio. Bhasin, by then Gatorade’s chief brand officer, told the magazine the company was working towards “integrated storytelling” across the brands, and Del Pozzo described Propel as something a consumer might drink throughout the day.

A celebrity partner arrived at the same moment. Marketing Dive reported on 2 February 2023 that Propel had signed a multi-year partnership with the actor and director Michael B. Jordan, covering creative work and storytelling as well as efforts to widen access to fitness, and including a tie-up with Creed III, which Jordan directed and starred in, released on 3 March 2023. Bhasin told the publication that Propel was “all about driving solutions for passionate exercisers,” and that Jordan bridged casual and elite athletes.

Design and documentation.

Ready-to-drink tea, flavored water, sports drinks and craft soda share a cooler shelf, but their packaging asks different things of a label. A tea can or tall glass bottle is often read from several feet away, so the name, the flavor and a colour cue have to work together at a glance, while the back of the pack carries ingredients, nutrition panels and the legal small print that every drink must show.

Flavored-water and sports-drink bottles tend to lean on colour coding, since a shopper picking one flavor from a long row is often matching a hue rather than reading a word. Craft-soda labels sit at the other end: many use illustration, hand lettering or a story on the bottle to suggest a small maker, even when the brand has since become part of a much larger drinks company.

Each guide in this group looks at who started the brand, who owns it now and how its labels, logos and bottles have been described in dated sources, and it marks plainly where a statement rests only on what the company says about itself. The colours and type shown are our own unofficial interpretation.

Vault49, a new wordmark and touches of silver and neon.

The 2023 identity was built around a mark borrowed from the parent brand. Marketing Dive reported in February 2023 that the rebrand put a strong emphasis on Propel’s connection to Gatorade by incorporating Gatorade’s orange lightning bolt, in the hope that shoppers would link the two brands, and that the rollout was expected to be complete by the summer.

PepsiCo’s own designers describe how it was done. In a case study, PepsiCo Design + Innovation says it worked with the brand design agency Vault49 to create a new visual identity system for Propel. The team says it set out to connect Propel and Gatorade visually by embedding the orange bolt that Gatorade is known for in a new Propel wordmark. The case study says the system covers a photography strategy and lifestyle imagery as well as a fresh logo, typography and colour palette, and that it uses “touches of silver and energizing neon.” The design group says the new look debuted in 2023, and quotes Sean Huls, senior design director for its Gatorade and energy brands, calling it an “effective visual identity that marks a new chapter in the Propel story.”

The case study also explains the thinking behind the name. PepsiCo Design + Innovation says the idea of driving forward and unlocking potential is “embedded in the very name” of Propel, and that it explored many paths to make the brand stand out on shelves and on screens as it repositioned Propel as a fitness lifestyle brand. The same company had used the name as the core of its message in 2009, when Packaging World described the 4sight bottle as built to communicate “Life Propelled.”

The Gatorade connection is now the organising idea of the brand’s marketing as well as its pack. Fast Company reported in 2023 that PepsiCo planned to market the portfolio with “brought to you by Gatorade”-style branding, and quoted Bhasin as saying that bringing the Gatorade brand in “lifts all these other brands up” and helps people understand how to use them. Marketing Dive said Bhasin also oversaw marketing for Lifewtr and Fast Twitch, putting Propel inside a wider family of PepsiCo drinks managed together.

For a design guide, Propel shows how a sub-brand can borrow the strongest mark in its family — Gatorade’s bolt — and set it inside its own wordmark, while silver and neon keep the water distinct from the sports drink. Compare it with Gatorade, its parent brand, and with vitaminwater. For this guide we use bolt orange, brushed silver and neon lime with a heavy grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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