Late December saw Beats by Dre roll out a festive ‘Fatherhood’ campaign built around a montage of family footage and images of basketball super star LeBron James and his son Bronny to offer viewers a heart-tugging peek into their father/son bond.
The campaign, developed with the Apple owned audio brand’s agency of record Translation, used never-before-seen authentic family footage. Among the key visuals were shots of LeBron cuddling with the infant Bronny, marking birthdays, prey-wrestling, music recitals, fishing trips and, of course, basketball games.
This festive season marketing burst from the Apple-owned brand saw creatives at agency Translation ask Savannah James for permission to comb through material that had never been released publicly.
Product placement is, as ever with Beats, intentionally light, but the spot does feature footage of Bronny as a young child wearing old-school Beats headphones, while the final shot sees father and son equipped with the latest Beats Studio Buds and Beats Fit Pro.
The 49-second spot’s narration adds to the emotional punch of the black-and-white footage. It sees LeBron admit that he was scared when his first son was born, “But I kept trying, and as you grew, so did I: patience, commitment and joy – things I learned from basketball and things I really understood from you.”
The ad dropped across social channels – including Beats’ Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – from 12 December and it featured music by Grammy-nominated Leon Thomas and urged viewers to ‘shop the full line of Beats products at beatsbydre.com’.
The agency’s creative team sought to highlight the personal connection between the two, while spreading a broader message celebrating Black fatherhood.
“It wasn’t about finding the most beautiful, highly produced imagery,” explained Translation Chief Creative Officer Jason Campbell. “In fact, we gravitated toward the raw, the real, the home footage that really showed LeBron and Bronny as father and son and helped give more meaning to LeBron’s voiceover.”
“We don’t hear enough stories celebrating Black fatherhood,” continued Campbell. “And when we do, it’s usually about the absentee father myth. But the truth is that Black fathers are among the most present in their children’s lives.”
According to Beats CMO Chris Thorne, the brand aimed to continue its storytelling ad tradition whilst presenting its products as ‘multigenerational’ and ‘humanising its talent roster by sharing their experiences off the court’.
This ‘Fatherhood’ commercial could easily have been a Father’s Day campaign, but Beats released it’s during the festive season for several reasons.
“We wanted to capture the warm sentiment of family, which rings true for consumers regardless of how they celebrate the holidays,” said Beats’ Thorne. “This season traditionally signifies a time of reflection, change and optimism for the future, and LeBron’s testimony of experiencing fatherhood perfectly brings those themes to life.”
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This spot takes a fairly unconventional approach to a holiday ad by digging through an athlete ambassador’s private video archives.
This USA Beats campaign ran at the same time as another father-and-son sports spot in the form of NHL partner MassMutual’s ‘On and Off Ice’ starring Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy and his father and leveraging the NHL 2023 Winter Classic.
This seasonal Beats spot followed on from a previous ad starring the father-son duo from October 2022 which was based around an on-court matchup between them (whilst their Beats earbuds were playing completely different tunes).
LeBron James was actually the first athlete that Beats ever signed to an endorsement deal and son Bronny also recently inked his own personal Beats endorser NIL agreement to become the first high school player with an official link with the company.
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