Beats by Dre are headphones produced by Beats Electronics. They are an audio and electronic company that primarily concerns themselves with the product of “high end” headphones and speakers for consumers. Beats got its start in California when rapper, businessman, and producer Dr. Dre teamed up with Interscope Geffen A&M’s chairman Jimmy Lovine; forming together in 2006 to create the company. The two felt that today’s music listeners were not fully hearing the “true sound” of their music and they wanted to create a headphone that allows them to “hear music as it was intend to be heard”. Since the creation of their first headphone Beats by Dre have grown exponentially and have sold millions of units around the world. They were so successful that they were just recently purchased by Apple for a $3 billion dollar cash and stock deal. One can easily argue that much of their success is attributed to their marketing efforts.
Beats has done and continues to produce great commercials and marketing campaigns that helps ensure that their products fly off the shelf. Beats wanted their brand to be associated with celebrities and athletes; to be seen by consumers as something cool. Beats has produced a variety of commercials displaying athletes and various musicians using their headphones. Beats approaches marketing campaigns similar to the way Apple does. Their ads typically display a “lifestyle” or a look into someone’s life who uses Beats by Dre. These types of advertisements invoke a more emotional response from viewers rather than an advertisement where someone just describes the product. In fact none of the recent Beats commercials tell you what kind of speakers the headphones use, or the frequency range of the headphones, rather they show a famous rapper or an athlete using the product in their day-to-day life. Outside of their commercials, Beats also pays certain celebrities to wear their headphones at various public events and appearances.
In the past year Beats has done commercials featuring Ed Sheeran, Colin Kaepernick, Kevin Garnett, and Richard Sherman. Each of the commercials displays them using their Beats headphones in their normal life: whether they are using them to drone out the press in the locker room after the game, or to record a demo in a hotel suite. Beats wants to show its consumers how their headphones can fit seamlessly into your life, and that all the cool celebrities and athletes are using them. Even though Beats by Dre headphones have been criticized by producers, audiophiles, and sound-engineers for being over-priced and producing sub-average sound (they do produce below average sound considering their cost compared to competitors) they remain some of the most popular headphones on the market today.
Here are a couple of their most popular ads of 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wZKyrq4jBM
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