BeatsBy Fre teamed up with media partner Sky Media and athlete ambassador Anthony Joshua for a campaign, called ‘AJ Fight Of The Century’, based around exclusive training and pre-fight locker room live footage.
This week long campaign, developed in harness with agency Havas S&E, PMG & Anomaly, ran in the days immediately before the big fight.
Summary:
Beats has long identified the power of music within sport as an untapped opportunity and much of the brand’s marketing revolves around this core big idea.
Beats, which has a long term endorser deal with Joshua (reported to be worth around £500,000 per year) leveraged his 29 April 2017 fight against Wladimir Klitschko, through a campaign that integrated the brand into the whole fight journey from training to fight night and establish the brand as the common denominator between music and sport.
Partnering with Sky Sports, Beats gave fans an all access pass to exclusive content leading up to the event and including the night itself, dominating all social conversation.
The results were knock-out, including ecommerce sales up 18% and website visits up 350% week-on-week during fight week. Beats also achieved 24.4m views & 890k engagements across all AJ ‘#BeHeard’ content on social media. Beats lead the way in which a brand can amplify their broadcast sponsorship to new heights on social media.
Background:
Beats had identified the power of music within sport as an untapped opportunity. Its winning formula of ‘Music + Sports = Beats introduced a unique marketing approach to the headphones category. Few moments act as a stronger metaphor for what Beats stand for than the tension and crescendo of passion around high performance sport. It’s the sound that inspires athletes to be heard through their performances and passion.
On 29 April 2017 Anthony Joshua took on the fight of his life against Wladimir Klitschko.
Future Great vs Current Great in the biggest fight of the Century, was anticipated by millions across the globe. Rising star of heavyweight boxing and brand ambassador, Anthony Joshua, presented Beats with a huge opportunity.
As the official fight broadcaster, Sky Sports owned the connection between boxing fans and the event, by partnering with Sky, Beats had the canvas to launch a campaign befitting the Hype.
Objectives:
The campaign had 3 clear objectives:
1. Integrate Beats into the Journey Beats wanted to integrate the brand into everything that leads to the performance (on this occasion, the fight). This included travelling to the arena, Training, Preparation…the build-up –integrating beats across key moments right up to the first bell.
2. Establish Beats as the intersection between music & sports Focus on the places where fans and athletes use Music and Beats products to get ready for the main event. Contextually place AJ’s story across broadcast and social channels.
3. Behind every champion there is Beats Show that preparation, translated to action in the ring, leads to joy and celebration. #BeHeard promoted on social across the event, beyond the result in the ring through to celebrate! Execution and exploitation The idea was to turn the big event into an all access pass for fans, to be fully immersed into AJ’s road to Wembley, and for Beats to be at the heart of it.
The partnership needed to create content, buy and activate media in real-time to engage huge numbers of fans and connect them to the fight experience beyond the live broadcast. They needed to tap into the emotions of new fans of the Sport due to AJ’s rise in popularity, and associate Beats with one of the most anticipated fights in modern history.
Sky gave Beats exclusive access to its production crew and live footage. In return, Sky was invited to Beats’ film shoots, which gave it access to the brand’s ambassadors. This seamlessly wove Beats into the crucial moments throughout the fight narrative.
Campaign Overview:
A new type of partnership evolved. Beats by Dre and Sky Sports partnered to share content through their joint investment in AJ.
This partnership mutually benefited both brands through promotion of both the Pay Per View fight on Sky Sports and AJ’s brand association with Beats to millions of fans.
Sky Sports could leverage Beats’ association with AJ through exclusive footage rights beyond the fight and likewise, Beats’ could take advantage of Sky’s audience and platforms.
Such an association would allow Beats to take the brand beyond the team bus and the locker room, into the stadium.
Pre-fight, Anticipation was built to fever pitch, with distribution of AJ content across multiple platforms in the 5 days building up to the main event, all tagged with #BEHEARD.
This included TV Spots across the Sky Channel portfolio and the lead spot, first posted on Beats’ YouTube channel on 24 April, is set to Michael Kiwanuka’s ‘Rule the World’ track from the English soul musician’s 2016 album ‘Love & Hate’.
The ad’s copy links the athlete ambassador and the music with the following line: ‘London made. Rule the World. With award winning sound to maintain Anthony Joshua’s focus he will #BEHEARD around the World on Fight Night.
The activation continued across digital, Sky Go linear, PC VoD, social media – including Twitter,
From the ground up. London’s own. @anthonyfjoshua will #BEHEARD #JoshuaKlitschko pic.twitter.com/j4lMzgqAJS
— Beats By Dre UK (@beatsbydreUK) April 24, 2017
Facebook,
and Instagram.
With further support on the boxer’s own platforms too.
London Made. Rule The World. @beatsbydreUK #BEHEARD #JoshuaKlitschko pic.twitter.com/LJogAL2uAR
— Anthony Joshua (@anthonyfjoshua) April 24, 2017
The ad’s ‘Rule the World’ track, by Michael Kiwanuka, can be accessed on Apple Music at beats.is/RuleTheWorld
While on skysports.com. Sky Sports boxing used Twitter Amplify for pre-roll adverts of AJ sparring and wearing Beats headphones to promote the live event. This allowed Beats to reach new audiences and be the driver of social conversation around the fight, with #BeHeard.
Home-Page take over’s across skysports.com and in the Sky Sports App, along with Snapchat discover take overs further expanded the reach and placed Beats in prime position.
Beats owned assets, including ambassadors Dr Dre, Harry Kane and Rio Ferdinand, were also used to create excitement on social media.
Furthermore, playing on the Music + Sports theme, Beats extended the partnership to Apple Music to create AJ’s ringside playlist, bringing the everyday fan into the heart of the action.
The Locker Room Exclusively on Facebook live, Sky Sports broadcast footage of AJ in his locker room, giving fans and viewers a unique and unprecedented access to see AJ in preparation for the fight.
The footage was also shared on Twitter to increase hype around what was a true first of its kind in the sport.
Live at Wembley, fans were invited to tweet their well wishes to AJ, these were then streamed live across perimeter boards around the arena, offering fans the chance to #BEHEARD by AJ himself.
The Ringwalk Broadcast live in Wembley and to millions of homes via Sky Box Office, exclusive Beats footage was integrated into AJ’s Ringwalk VT, bringing Beats directly into the fight countdown.
Extending to fans beyond the live event, Beats had exclusive access to Sky’s raw broadcast coverage to create real time engagement videos that were shared via Beats Facebook and Twitter handles.
Seconds before the first bell, a unique turbo break was broadcast live on Sky Sports, a Beats #BEHEARD pre-roll, bringing Beats into the heart of the fight and encouraging social conversation. In the triumphant 11th round of the fight, fans across the country rejoiced and Beats were at the forefront of the celebration, quickly editing footage to share across social media.
Outcome and Evaluation:
The results were a knock-out, proving that Beats truly owned their opportunity to #BeHeard.
This campaign not only seamlessly interlaced the brand into one of the biggest sporting events of the century, but it lead the way in how partnerships can be activated and taken to a new level with social media – connecting a relevant audience, in real time.
> Beats pummelled AJ’s other sponsors, dominating Share of Voice by owning 65% of all views and 83% of all engagement across fight week and fight night. This hit the ultimate objective of the brand integration across the full journey.
> Achieved 24.4m views & 890k engagements across all AJ ‘#BeHeard’ content on social media: Beats owned the social conversation around the event, delivering one of their original objectives.
Ecommerce sales +18% and website visits up 350% week-on-week during fight week across EMEA.
> Not only is this an additional success with sales revenue, but achieved the objective of establishing Beats as the intersection between music & sports.
> Organic and earned media from Sky Sports and SPORTbible delivered an additional audience of 1.5M social media followers, contributing to over £30k in earned media value.
> Brand mentions peaked during fight night with +1.5k mentions on Twitter – more than any other sponsor and more than @skysportsboxing.
> Twitter amplify pre-roll videos received a whopping 13 million views!
> Homepage Take Overs across SkySports.com and in App delivered a staggering 87million impressions.
> Snapchat discover content had 6 million impressions.
> Sky Sport Boxing Real time engagement social media videos posted to FB had an impressive 10 million video views
> Beats by Dre social media videos created with Sky Sports Boxing broadcast coverage and boxing archive footage had 5.3 million Video views, 58k Likes, 1.8k Comments and 6.9k Shares
Activative Comment:
Joshua joins Beat’s extensive portfolio of athlete ambassadors which spans stars such as LeBron James, Serena Williams and Tom Brady.
But with just 9,502 YouTube views thus far, this spot has a long way to go before it matches up to the multiple million views and engagements racked up by previous Beats sports star fronted, big sports event campaigns – such as its Euro 2016 ‘[Match] Ready’ (see case study) and its 2015 Rugby World Cup ‘The Game Starts Here’ (see case study) campaign.
It was actually back in December 2016 Joshua featured in his first Beats advert, created by Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine, alongside an impressive, star-studded line-up of sports and entertainment stars ranging from Irish cage fighter Conor McGregor to Man City soccer star Kevin De Bruyne (see previous case study).
Links:
Beats by Dre
http://www.youtube.com/beatsbydre
http://www.facebook.com/beatsbydre/
http://twitter.com/beatsbydre/
http://www.instagram.com/beatsbydre/
https://plus.google.com/+beatsbydre
http://pinterest.com/beatsbydre/
Anthony Joshua
https://twitter.com/anthonyfjoshua
https://www.instagram.com/anthony_joshua/
https://www.facebook.com/anthonyjoshuaboxer/
