The love between sports and music still Beats

Music and sport have never been as much connected as in the past few years: both Bose and Beats by Dre have highly invested in a new athletes’ generation in order to create a constant dialogue with customers. Speaking of which, the Californian company co-founded by the legend Andre Romelle Young, a.k.a. Dr. Dre, has recently launched “Be Heard” a new campaign where, on the “Seven Nation Army” beat, Beats presented the new products: Beats Studio Wireless, Powerbeats3 Wireless, and Solo3 Wireless. Several stars joined the video: LeBron James, Serena Williams, Eden Hazard, Kevin DeBruyne are only few of them. The originality and the wideness of Beats’ products let the players act wearing their own sponsors: also Chelsea FC played an important role letting Beats by Dre using images with their supporters and players at the same time, enriching the short’s reality.

A success coming from far away

Despite Beats represents one of the most valued and coolest product, thanks to several different products, the way towards the success was not easy. Since the beginning the strategy behind the Californian company was clear: they involved as much athletes and VIP as they could in order to enhance and create a long-term brand awareness. During the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Beats equipped several athletes with their headphones during the opening ceremony: by doing this Beats showed to the world their products enhancing the curiosity behind it. Moreover, many sportsmen and sportswomen had been spotted using Beats headphones during their leisure time, confirming the product’s qualities.

One of the biggest success reached by Dr.Dre & Jimmy Iovine is dated back to the 2014 Brazilian World Cup: right after the acquisition of Beats Electronics by Apple Inc, in anticipation of the World Cup Beats by Dre promoted a global campaign named “The Game before the Game”. Even though the players were not allowed to use Beats heaphones on-pitch– one of the main World Cup sponsor was Sony, Beats’ rival – the players themselves wore them off-pitch helping to create a huge hype around the products. The short movie lasts around 5 minutes and it achieved more than 30 millions views on YouTube; Neymar and friends simulate the pre-match moments where they are used to listening to music or talk to their parents in order to find the best concentration and power.

This practice has been common within both professional and amateur athletes. However, thanks to their marketing skills, Beats has been able to grasp a need that has always been important in sport: the pursuit of concentration through music.

Rivals?

Bose amongst others represents Beats’ alter-ego. Founded many years before Beats has always adopted a different marketing strategy.

A special curiosity regards NFL: in 2014 the National Football League signed an exclusive deal with Bose which became the supplier of the league and left Beats empty-handed. Beats has been successively banned by the NFL in order to defend their partnership with Bose.

Bose do not sponsor as much athletes as Beats does but they still have many important sportsmen: Lewis Hamilton amongst others is the roster’s diamond point.

A glimpse to the future

It’s clear that Beats has been very capable of investing in music and sports making these two Arts even more connected. From Beats point of view, the benefits from being part of Apple are several: in fact, Beats by Dre is the market leader owning 70% of the market share.

In the next years we will probably assist to an increasing number of partnerships between music, sport and entertainment’s industries. We cannot exclude that also music streaming services will decide to invest in such a flourish business, following the case of Apple Music.