Beats: Bring Back Fans Not Racism

Havas Entertainment

Agency: Beats

Beats is a brand rooted in defiance with black youth culture at its heart. Our strategy is a simple one. Shine

the light of defiance on issues affecting black youth at key cultural moments to make positive stories more public and bring about positive action.


Football had seen a shocking rise in reports of racism pre-lockdown. With growing momentum behind the spirit of 'building back better' post-Covid, Beats wanted to ensure that racism in stands remained a thing of the past, when limited numbers of fans could return to stadiums in December after a 9-month hiatus.


With only 72 hours between the UK Government guidelines changing and those first games being played, we had to move fast to get the campaign live at scale. With such a meaningful task at hand, we needed to ensure the experience was unmissable, reaching as many football fans as possible, through channels that allowed agility, hyper-targeting and mass reach.


We wanted to get as close to football fans as possible in order to own the moment of fans going back and to ignite positive conversation. Beats created a manifesto style ad that ran in national press next to football, was projected onto football stadiums and we even created bespoke face masks with our anti-racism message that were distributed outside stadiums and covered on broadcast television.