Responses by Jason Campbell, chief creative officer, Translation.
Background: The purpose of this campaign was to introduce the world to technology manufacturer Beats’s latest product innovation—the Powerbeats Pro 2—and demonstrated how it is one of its greatest sports innovations to date. We wanted to introduce the earbuds’s heart rate monitoring feature and demonstrate its benefits to athletes across the globe. This project was a campaign that empowers athletes of all backgrounds, ages and nationalities, so we cast a wide net and targeted a massive audience worldwide.
Design thinking: It started with a simple question: What do LeBron James, Lionel Messi and Shohei Ohtani have in common beyond being the best at what they do? They play different sports and come from different cultures, but when we dug deeper, we found this incredible insight: the greatest athletes in the world can actually control their heart rates. That’s not just a fact; it’s a mindset. Once we had that, the story wrote itself. It wasn’t about basketball, baseball or football; it was about how these athletes experience pressure and how they stay in control when the world is watching. The Powerbeats Pro 2 gave us the perfect way to bring that to life. The product enabled us to tell a sports story from an entirely new perspective—inside athletes’ bodies and minds.
Challenges: The campaign was shot over several months in multiple cities and countries, so one key challenge was ensuring every element of the film felt cohesive and connected. Beyond capturing three different sports, we also had to capture three different environments, heavily informing our pulsing-light visual treatment. We also wanted to make sure our secondary shots felt unique to our stars and alluded to their careers and lives; however, we needed them to still hang together in the visual language of the piece.
Favorite details: We wanted to find a way to highlight the product and tell a story from an interesting angle—something that felt unexpected yet undeniable. Nailing the core insight that athletes can slow their heart rates on command enabled us to create a film that felt fresh and showcase the product in a way that inspired and empowered viewers.
New lessons: The process of working with these three icons with such a unique story felt new to all of us. While studying them and their hearts, we really got to know what drives them. We learned about their personal passions and goals and worked closely with their respective teams to make sure we got it right.
Specific project demands: It wasn’t directly “demanded,” but we knew we had to get the Japanese and Argentinian details right when we told these stories. Those two countries have such unique and rich cultures, so we needed to make sure every line and reference not only landed but evoked pride. We had amazing teams in South America and Japan that held this film feel authentic and insightful to our international viewers.
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