Case Study: Building The Rock’s Gym Headphones

When JBL partnered with Under Armour and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the goal was to create the best wireless headphones for serious gym training. It was one of the most complex and rewarding projects of my career. The market was full of sport headphones made for running, by people who didn’t know a deadlift from a curl. And because this was a corporate strategic partnership, every decision required alignment between my business-unit leadership, corporate marketing, Under Armour’s executive team, and The Rock’s personal representatives. My challenge was to keep all those perspectives aligned while protecting the soul of the product: authentic, high-performance gear for real lifters.

Core Belief in Action: Customer-Centered Product Development

Belief: Every successful product begins with a specific customer and a clearly understood pain.

Most companies start with a spec sheet; we started with sweat.

We mapped real athlete pain points: headphones that slipped off on the bench, got slimy when sweaty, or left lifters feeling disconnected with too much noise cancelation.

We replaced fake leather ear cushions with Under Armour’s original innovation: HeatGear® moisture-wicking fabric, making them authentic to the brand and way less disgusting! We fine-tuned the headband caliper pressure through countless iterations to ensure one fit worked for everyone, from tiny athletes with ponytails to The Rock’s enormous shaved head.

Then came one of the most important insights: in the gym, you often need to talk without stopping your training. Whether you’re saying hello to a friend, listening to a coach’s cues, or training with a partner, constantly removing sweaty headphones and putting them back on was a terrible experience.

From that insight, our team developed JBL’s patented TalkThru™ Technology, a button-press mode that activated tiny microphones, allowing natural conversation through the headphones without taking them off. It was later echoed in Apple’s AirPods Transparency Mode and others, but at the time it was pretty new. That innovation came not from trend-watching, but from deeply understanding the realities of real training.

Core Belief in Action: Strategic Positioning and Differentiation

Belief: A product without a story is a commodity.

There were plenty of sport headphones, but none captured the culture of training. The discipline, the grit.

We positioned the The Rock’s headphones not as another gadget but as training equipment. Every design choice and every word of copy reinforced that message: built to perform under pressure, just like the athletes who wear them.

This wasn’t just a celebrity signature on the box; it was alignment of values shared by The Rock, Under Armour, JBL, and serious athletes.

Core Belief in Action: Branding as Behavior

Belief: Branding isn’t limited to design work; it’s behavior.

Every interaction in the process reflected the brand’s character. The cross-company collaboration had to model the same focus, trust, and endurance we wanted athletes to feel when using the product.

Even the small details like the tactile click of the buttons, to the feel of the fabric, the precise tension and rubber inner coating of the headband, expressed the values of the athletes we served.

Outcome and Lesson

The project required navigating corporate politics, aligning multiple leadership teams, and holding the line on what mattered. But the outcome justified the grind.

The Rock x JBL x UA headphones established a durable premium presence and proved that authentic differentiation comes from alignment. Years after I left JBL’s parent company, Harman, I would still see those headphones on shelf in Under Armour stores. That’s a near-eternity in consumer audio. That longevity wasn’t luck… it was the outcome of a product built on empathy, truth, and story integrity.

This project remains a benchmark for how I work today. Whether advising a brand, guiding a product team, or shaping company strategy, I hold to the same principle: when your story, your customer, and your operations are aligned, product sales endure.