Beats by Dre yesterday debuted a new ad featuring Seahawks CB Richard Sherman that shows him "barraged by a fictional scrum of postgame media," according to Chris Strauss of USATODAY.com. Each reporter in the ad makes "more and more disrespectful generalizations" until Sherman "has to block them all out" with the Beats noise-cancelling headphones. The ad is "clearly exaggerated to prey on assumptions that the Stanford-educated athlete's on-field demeanor and frequent trash talk off of it somehow makes him a dirty player, a criminal or even worse, a 'thug'" (
USATODAY.com, 1/20). The Sherman ad is the latest in a campaign that has included Nets F Kevin Garnett and 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick, whose team played Sherman's Seahawks in yesterday's NFC Championship game, and FOXSPORTS.com's Sid Saraf wrote Beats execs "know how to include every possible market" (
FOXSPORTS.com, 1/19).
TIMING IS EVERYTHING: ESPN this morning aired the Sherman ad for Beats during a commercial block in the 9:00am ET edition of "SportsCenter". Given the
awkward interview between Sherman and Fox' Erin Andrews following yesterday's NFC Championship, the next ad to run ironically featured Andrews promoting Probiotics (
THE DAILY).
