CELEBRITIES AT THE HEART OF THE COMMUNICATION OF BEATS BY DR. DRE

Hey!
As I promised, let’s tackle the communication and promotion strategy of the Beats’ company today!

Well … Apart from doing “classical” marketing such as press, TV spots, social media and so on, Beats has its own unique way for attracting its customers and creating brand awareness. 
Indeed, the brand’s strategy is first to “use” celebrities from the music industry to promote its products and so, playing on consumer emotions.

But, how?

To begin with, we can easily understand this strategy just by reading the name of the brand: Beats by Dr. Dre. The name of the creator itself is part of the brand name, in order to attract fans of this US rapper. Indeed, as its fan communities want to look like Dre, they will be more tempted to adopt the same thoughts, behaviors and purchases than their idol. This is especially so because Beats consumers are mainly young people who are more willing to be influenced by celebrities.
But the celebrity strategy is not only focused on the founder of the brand. Indeed, celebrities are also at the heart of Beats advertisements, as ambassadors of the brand. As an example, let’s take a look at the TV spot created by Beats for the Football Cup which is the perfect illustration of Beats communication strategy and celebrities: 

Beats went one step further regarding this strategy. Indeed, the brand has also developed limited editions of headphones in partnership with famous people: Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Kobe Bryant … 

In this way, the brand succeeded in creating more and more awareness and increased its demand for headphones. In fact, these stars are wearing the Beats headphone in their clips; you can see them in the tabloids, etc.


Beats is also promoting its headphones during big sport events, by practicing “ambush marketing”. This practice stems from its “celebrity strategy” as the brand is offering Beats headphones to the athletes, that they will probably wear during the event. For instance, the brand sent a headphone to each member of the UK and US teams during the Olympic Games of 2012. The goal of this action was to attract a new type of consumers and more precisely to target amateur sportsmen. 

Indeed, lately, we can observe through advertising that this target is at the heart of the brand strategy. The basketball player Lebron James and the tennis woman Serena Williams are the current ambassadors of the Beats headphones. 

All in all, we can see that the brand Beats is mainly recruiting its consumers through emotions. Surprisingly, although the brand claims for high sound quality, it does not explain in detail the features of the product that allows this quality in its ads. The only fact that famous singers and musicians are using the product is sufficient to convince and then engage the consumer.

But what are the strategies of Beats’ competitors? 

This will be our next topic!


Anaïs



Sources : 
https://www.google.fr/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=ambush%20marketing%20beats
http://fr.slideshare.net/WilliamBelle/beats-by-dr-dre-2012
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2011/08/the-10-best-custom-celebrity-beats-by-dr-dre-headphones/