Situation: With the 2022 World Cup in Qatar looming, and a global campaign on the way, Beats by Dre wanted to extend the campaign to the Japan market with a bespoke local execution.

Brief: Laddering up to the global campaign's top-level theme - "Defy the Noise" - our goal was to create an execution for the local market featuring Japanese footballer Ritsu Doan. The catch? As Ritsu was preparing for the tournament, we wouldn't be able to film him in Japan, and had to find a creative way to incorporate existing video assets that had already been captured for the global campaign.

Objectives: Earned media, fan sentiment from the two influencers' audiences.

Knowing that we wouldn't be able to film Ritsu himself, we wanted to find a way to nonetheless delight his fans with a video that would resonate. From our discussions with the client, we learned that he was a big fan of rap music and, in particular, Japanese rapper AK-69. Although AK-69 was not a pre-existing Beats influencer, we engaged him specifically for this campaign, piquing his interest by describing Ritsu's authentic love for his music.

We then asked AK-69 to create an original spoken-word performance to cheer on Ritsu at the World Cup, similarly drawing on the rapper's authentic passion for football, and his desire to support the national team.

Putting the two together, we worked to develop an exciting creative execution that paired both influencers: AK-69 filmed locally, in-person, and footage of Ritsu Doan captured abroad, repurposed for this video.

From the beginning, we shot the video knowing that we wanted to prioritise IG-native exports, framing up key sequences at 9:16 and then, in post, making sure that all subs and supers were positioned optimally for smartphone viewing within the Instagram app.

We hid clever "Easter Eggs" within the content to truly delight fans of each star: In the dialogue at the beginning, the phrase "otsukare te iwaremashita" (essentially meaning: "They're already writing off our chances") was a reference to a quote that Ritsu had given in a real interview a few weeks earlier, when asked about how his German club teammates were reacting to Japan's chances. We even did a pre-interview with Ritsu's brother ahead of the shoot to learn more about Ritsu's character, and - on the flipside - we also worked closely with AK-69 to hone his spoken-word script for maximum impact and authenticity.

The video was released on the eve of Japan’s first game in the tournament via both Ritsu and AK-69's own social media channels, creating a buzz amongst their fans. This was then followed up with a paid media boost on Beats by Dre's brand-owned YouTube channel that was ramped up once the magic started to happen: One-Nil down against Germany in their first game, Ritsu Doan came off the bench on the 71st minute, and then scored an incredible equalizer to send the whole of Japan into raptures, before they went on to seal a famous underdog victory.

This continued as Japan beat Spain in a must-win match: With every goal, and every victory, fans revisited our video spot to comment on their pride towards Ritsu and the team’s performances. On a slim media budget, the traction behind the video spiralled on all channels, with millions of views.

On a slim media budget, the traction behind the video spiralled on all channels, with millions of views: We registered over 1.12 million views via earned media alone across each influencer's social media channels, and this was supplemented with 1.4M views via a paid boost on the brand's YouTube channel. Sentiment was overwhelmingly positive across all comments, and each post registered high engagement, with fans even re-visiting the social posts as Japan progressed through the World Cup, resulting in an unusually long-tail halo effect for a social-first campaign rollout.