Essentia Hydroboost's hoop-shooting horseplay

For those unfamiliar with the basketball staple, H.O.R.S.E  is a game in which players take turns shooting at the hoop from different locations. If someone makes a shot but everyone else misses, those people get a letter towards the word 'HORSE'. The last person left standing wins!

Simple, right? But most people aren't seated on an actual horse while playing, and H.O.R.S.E on a Horse is the unsubtle, unusual but undoubtedly interesting premise for this new campaign for Essentia Hydroboost.

Created by Droga5 New York, the campaign flips the popular ‘hold my beer’ phrase so that the drink isn’t a precursor to an epic fail, but the catalyst for an iconic win. The campaign launch features six-time NBA all-star Jimmy Butler as he saddles up to show what supercharged hydration can do.

The spot is directed by Zach Math through Caviar, and the two-minute film playfully unleashes Butler’s bombastic self as he pulls up to a local pick-up court on horseback and proceeds to throw down the challenge. "Mozart the horse was very specific about the oat bars in his trailer, was Christian Bale-like about blocking his eye line, and wasn’t potty trained. But that horse can hoop!" said Math, who is represented in the UK by BOLD.

“Hydration is in the collective consciousness in a big way," said Tom McQueen, Executive Creative Director at Droga5. "Drinking water is suddenly synonymous with not only good health, but almost success in general life. People talk about water like it’s a magical elixir, which is silly; it’s not — but Essentia Hydroboost is. That’s the beauty of Hold My Hydroboost. It’s a celebrity-studded social and influencer campaign that allows us to exaggerate the benefits of supercharged hydration in really entertaining, unexpected and surprising ways, be it a supercharged game of H.O.R.S.E on a horse, or supercharged take on a #GRWM for the world.”  

“The water category is pretty saturated (pun intended) so doing something that stands out and steals some attention was an absolute must,” added Rob McQueen, Creative Director at Droga5. “Sometimes we forget that this can be fun, and when we get the chance to launch something into the world with some fun built into it for everyone to enjoy, it’s even better. And despite the internet loving this, we did not need an algorithm or tons of data to know Jimmy Butler playing H.O.R.S.E. on an actual horse was going to be something people would like to watch.”