About Us Work Capabilities Careers Technology Blog Contact Us BEATS BY DRE Global Launch of Powerbeats Pro The sport and fitness earphone category and its consumer have evolved in recent years with a boom of wireless products flooding the market and elevating what athletes and fitness enthusiasts expected of earphone performance. With the launch of Powerbeats Pro, it was critical for Beats to regain performance credibility, and convince consumers it was more than a hype beast, but rather an innovation beast. Doing so successfully would shift how Beats’ earphones would be seen – from a high-end accessory to an essential piece of training equipment. Services Paid Social Display Brand Partnerships Digital Creative 7 Countries included in global launch 37M + Views of anthem video Top 5 Rated YouTube Ad Challenge With Powerbeats Pro, Beats was launching its most technically advanced product to date. PMG, in partnership with Beats’ other agencies, had an opportunity to help the brand stand out and be taken seriously in a new way. But it wouldn’t be enough to simply talk about product features. The rest of the category was already doing that, with very similar product offerings. The team needed to connect the features and benefits to athletes and sports enthusiasts in a way that sparked an emotional connection and fed their own sense of performance. Our goal was to make our version of performance so compelling that we transcend the category. Powerbeats Pro should be as essential to the modern athlete as a great pair of sneakers. Strategy & Approach To establish Powerbeats Pro as the world’s most advanced sports and fitness earphone, the campaign would need to resonate with athletes at all levels — elite and beyond — and inspire both Beats’ core audience as well as other segments that would allow the brand to expand outward. In balancing our media spend, we had to maximize visibility and increase awareness of Powerbeats Pro. Generating innovation credibility and pre-launch interest was critical to the success of the campaign, so the phased communications plan led with a two-week product/innovation focused PR tour. Simultaneously, product-focused communication launched from Beats’ channels as well as high profile OOH placements arranged by another of the brand’s agencies. As the product availability date closed in, the campaign moved into the launch phase designed to deliver an emotional layer atop the innovation foundation. An anthem spot launched in mid-April across seven countries. The first glimpses of the spot were on the social media channels of the athletes who starred in it, followed quickly by a global YouTube masthead reveal in seven countries, appearances on TV, digital takeovers, streaming platforms, the official Beats site, and movie theaters. In addition to the anthem spot, individual athlete demo videos were released that went into more depth on product features. To extend the campaign narrative over time and bring new, highly engaged fan groups into the mix, there were additional large scale buys attached to significant events in sports and pop culture to continue increasing exposure outward to a more mass audience, including the NBA Finals, Women’s World Cup, and other major pop culture events. We also created additional campaign touch-points around individual athletes, designing a social campaign across our partner athlete channels during their key moments of competition. Results At launch, Powerbeats Pro searches exceeded brand name searches by a healthy margin, and product searches were more than 4X higher than past product launches. This performance meant that the product-first innovation story had clearly landed. Brand quality score increased by double-digit percentage points as a result of this campaign, and banners featuring positive reviews demonstrated strong engagement with the product performance narrative, driving CTRs 2X higher than Beats’ prior results. The anthem spot got over 37 million views within 48 hours after launching — 70% of which coming from the global YouTube masthead takeover, and 22% coming from our featured athletes’ organic social posts — and earned a Top 5 spot on YouTube’s Ads Leaderboard because of its industry-leading level of viewership and engagement. RECENT WORK SurveyMonkey Alli Bidding to ROI Drives Higher Lifetime Value Subscriptions Omni Hotels Keeping Travelers Grounded by Going the (Shorter) Distance Palo Alto Networks Replacing Pipeline Loss Due to Canceled Meetings & Events VIEW ALL Fort Worth 2845 West 7th Street Fort Worth, TX 76107 Dallas 3102 Oak Lawn Avenue Suite 650 Dallas, TX 75219 Austin 823 Congress Avenue Suite 800 Austin, TX 78701 London 33 Broadwick Street London W1F 0DQ New York 120 East 23rd Street New York, NY 10010 Get in touch (817) 420 9970 info@pmg.com Subscribe to the PMG Newsletter © 2021 PMG Worldwide, LLC, All Rights Reserved Contact Privacy Policy