Our pals and sometimes partners-in-awesomeness, Struck/Axiom, recently helped Gatorade with its new social media command center.

The mission-control-like room features large screens with various social media visualizations, such that Gatorade marketing pros can monitor real time conversations not only related to the brand but its competition, sports nutrition, athletes and other popular culture topics its consumers care about. Here’s a YouTube clip overview.

Carla Hassan, Gatorade’s Sr. Marketing Director, says the goal of this project is to “take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into the largest participatory brand in the world.”

What Hassan is really talking about is an unprecedented level of brand engagement. Brands by their very nature are participatory. After all, brands are merely the aggregate of consumer perceptions, and these perceptions are shaped by consumers’ interactions or participation with a given brand.

The difference today is that people have social media which acts as an amplifier. Anyone can be a media source and build an audience. Smart brands understand that and embrace engagement.

Congrats to Struck/Axiom and Gatorade.