As a music producer, you know the feel and effects of quality sound, however like the masses you have to settle for the watered-down $1.00 version of ear-buds that accompanies your $800.00 iPhone. Such is the case of Dr. Dre (owner of Beats Headphones).
But when your target market has been conditioned to accept low-quality headphones for $20.00 how do you convince them to open their minds to the possibilities of one that cost $150.00; especially when the critics and heads of Audio Companies in this arena are not even entertaining the thought of your product.
Well, this is marketing at its bloody finest! … just before the USA Olympic Basketball team left for the 2008 Olympic Games; Jimmy Iovine business partner of Beats, decided to send the newly developed high-end headphones to key celebrities most of who were in the music entertainment arena to both get their feedback as well as a method of promoting the product. One of these celebrities was LeBron James. Within a few days, Iovine received a request from LeBron James for 15 more headphones, which was immediately dispatched to him, a few days later these same 15 headphones were seen on the ears of every member of the USA Basketball Olympic Team as they landed in Shanghai. This vision of a new ‘hip’ headphone was projected through televisions worldwide; the rest is history.
From that one image, other celebrities were seen with the high-end headphones that were once deemed to ‘never see the light of day’ by the critics. But six years after that dream; that belief; Beats now controls 70% of its sector’s market share and has grown into a $1 billion-dollar-plus business.
