Beats by Dre is launching a new campaign that highlights the pressure, criticism and expectations that professional athletes, in this case football’s greatest players, face off the field.
Produced by creative agency Uncommon and titled “Defy the Noise,” the new Beats campaign, which launches to coincide with the start of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, follows England’s Bukayo Saka, Germany’s Serge Gnabry, France’s Kingsley Coman and Japan’s Ritsu Doan as they detail the difficulties of being a professional athlete on a daily basis.
“Athletes are faced with more noise than ever before,” says Beats. “Pressure, injuries, online abuse, doubts…, the best players in the world all have overcome adversity to rise to the top of their game.”
In addition to criticism, professional athletes face racist slurs, hateful comments and harassment on a daily basis and have had to learn to keep their mouths shut and defy the harsh “noise” made on social media.
Last year, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho were subjected to online racial slurs after missing penalties in the Euro 2020 final against Italy, which England later lost.
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In the 90-second clip, Gnabry talks about the criticism leveled at him saying he cares more about his appearance than soccer, while Coman has been judged in the past for missing France’s 2018 World Cup win due to a serious injury. Saka talks about being the object of online hate, and Doan about the enormous pressure felt at the negative judgment on his team’s performance.
The film also serves as the premiere of British rapper Slowthai’s new single “I Know Nothing,” with powerful lyrics that address the evils of social media and how it “distorts our perception of reality.“
“‘I Know Nothing’ is a fight back against those people who are so quick to put the blame on the younger generation,” Slowthai said in a statement. “In a world full of misinformation and judgment, it only reveals the true intentions of how miserable people’s lives must be as they are so quick to jump on the bandwagon and applaud or point out people’s failures or vulnerabilities.”
Other professional athletes also appear in the campaign, such as Italian journalist Fabrizio Romano, soccer coach Joe Cole, former athlete Ledley King, among others.
Click on this link to read this article in French version.
