Hello Creative Souls,

Most brands talk about mental health the same way:

• launch a heartfelt film

• add a hashtag

• say “it’s okay not to be okay”

• hope people share it

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.

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.

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:

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

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.

Why this hits different

Most behaviour-change work is trying to move people from:

That’s hard, slow, and fragile. One bad headline and everyone’s “over it.”

Powerade skipped that whole dance and moved straight to:

That’s a very different psychological move.

When something sits in:

• a contract

• a policy

• an operating rule

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:

That’s how norms shift. Not from a single powerful message,
but from one structural decision that makes everyone else look outdated.

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.

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:

A re-write of how your brand operates outdoes a thousand rewrites of every run-of-the-mill awareness script any day.

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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.