Ellen DeGeneres Teases Beats Music Super Bowl Commercial and Partnership
Yesterday The Ellen Show released a YouTube clip that seems to be from today's yet-to-air show in which she announces that she's partnering with Beats Music and that she's going to be in one of their Super Bowl commercials. She also plays a brief clip from the commercial and says she'll show more on Thursday. Bringing in Ellen signals just how mainstream Beats Music's commercial push will be. It's one thing to get a bunch of celebrities out to a launch party during Grammy weekend thrown by a company that's making some of them lots of money and it's another thing to play the Ellen card.
Beth Snyder Bulik at AdAge seems to have broken the news that Ellen DeGeneres is partnering with Beats Music and appearing in a Super Bowl commercial. Sounds like a deeper relationship beyond just the commercial.
That makes a lot of sense. Their ties go back to Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones from Monster and have continued through the recent announcement of a shopping season release of special edition Ellen Wireless Beats by Dre Headphones (shown above).
Ellen's Teaming Up with Beats!
As Bulik notes, there was a Grammys commercial for Beats Music narrated by Trent Reznor. It's one of those "connecting to deep feelings in hopes of connecting those feelings to the brand" type ads.
It doesn't seem to have gotten much attention beyond the viewership but Ellen's involvement certainly will. In both cases, love for the particular celebrities will drive attention and shares though Trent Reznor's touchy feely ad doesn't really fit his brand like the tweet giving the Grammys a "heartfelt Fuck You" for rolling credits during the closing performance.
Tying Beats Music to Beats By Dre
What did catch some attention was the Beats Music launch party fueled by celebrities and the power of Beats By Dre headphones.
Beats By Dre is revving up for the Super Bowl with a solid Richard Sherman commercial. They, along with Graff Diamonds, also fueled Sherman's gifting of Beats By Dre diamond-encrusted headphones to his teammates.
Obviously there will be a lot of cross-marketing between Beats by Dre headphones and Beats Music. But it's been surprisingly light so far perhaps because the connections are obvious to consumers especially if the same celebrities start working both products.
Though I initially compared the emerging outlines of Beats Music's marketing campaign to that of a major label artist, a more appropriate comparison would be to a consumer brand intended for the mass market. Especially since that's what it is.
So I guess Beats Music will follow the Beats By Dre path and see if what worked for an individual product sale will also work for a monthly digital subscription.
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Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is currently relaunching All World Dance. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
