Gatorade Mission Control is a slick, glass-walled room glowing with the light of six huge, wall-mounted monitors. Other monitors and workstations cover a single curved desk, where as many as five marketing staffers keep their eyes glued to Gatorade’s place in the social media conversation, in real-time. One monitor charts tweets referencing the Gatorade brand and trending topics. Another shows several line charts tracking blog mentions of Gatorade as well as three rival brands.

The...