Dr Dre wanted to create a revolution in music, and for his CMO Omar Johnson that meant a revolution in the agency-client relationship. There’s no place for briefs in the way Beats works with its agency partner R/GA.
Beats was co-founded by the rapper along with legendary music producer Jimmy Iovine. Telstra had planned to launch the music service in Australia after striking a deal with the company, but a subsequent $3bn acquisition by Apple has placed a question mark over the deal.
Telstra media's digital and content director Adam Good has recently returned from the US. He would not be drawn on the subject but is still tweeting about Beats and the telco has not yet made any statements that suggest the plan has been scuppered.
Meanwhile, the Beats global business under its new owner gathers pace. And a hybrid music streaming model - Beats has an element of human curation - requires a bespoke agency model.
Speaking at Cannes, Johnson said: “So Dr Dre says ’it’s one thing people stealing my music, it’s another thing to destroy the feeling of what I’ve worked on’. It’s that feeling of how people feel when they listen to music. So my boss [Dre] says to me we have to create a revolution in music and I was like ’oh shit’. If we wanted a revolution in music, we had to revolutionise the agency-client relationship too.”
The relationship between Beats and R/GA is “like a family”, he said. “We eat together, we sleep together, we do everything together, I don't say that as a phrase - we genuinely do,” added Johnson.
The brand talks about being of and within culture which means it operates its marketing on a real-time strategy which means being responsive to events as they happen.
The ad it ran referencing Miley Cyrus twerking at the MTV awards was created in hours to air in the ad break immediately after her on-stage antics after a tip off that something was going to happen.
Similarly, after invoking the ire of the Seattle Seahawks for featuring the 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick getting abuse from Seahawks fans in an ad ahead of a match between the two rivals and calls for all Seahawks fans to boycott the Beats brand, it turned around a follow up starring Seahawks player Richard Sherman within seven days.
“You’ll probably hear the word culture thrown around the festival but for us it's music, sports, fashion and art. It's that simple and we think about how do we inject our product into culture. We don’t do crazy metaphorical things that seduce, we look for simple truths and product truths.
"If we're creating culture, it doesn't stand still. We focus on behaviours because we’re trying to inspire a new behaviours or amplify one that's just getting going. When you think about culture and real time, It's moving so a whole lot of our work is identifying cultures, moments and listening to what people are saying,” he said.
Beats says it is about putting “hustle” into the way it approaches brand and communication, which means R/GA also has to hustle.
James Temple vice president and managing director of R/GA London, said: “there’s no treatments or meetings that go on for weeks... It happens in days because it's happening in culture. As an agency we needed to work with that. [Fuck briefs], it just simply wouldn't work. If there’s a great track that hits you've got 24 hours. Briefs really wouldn't work for us. It’s is one of the core things for us – were creating culture.”
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