New Balance has a sneaker called the T-500, which is not a robot but a tennis shoe — and in its latest campaign, it turns out that tennis can, in fact, be played inside a shoebox. A real one. With real football phenom Endrick volleying around not with a racket, but a soccer ball, because the rules are flexible in surreal brand worlds.
The new installment in New Balance’s “Quiet Please” series places the Real Madrid-bound striker in the middle of a match that’s less Wimbledon and more meta-sport satire. The kicker? It’s all happening inside an oversized shoebox. Watching from the sidelines of this box-universe are Endrick himself (life-sized this time) and model Gabriely Miranda, lounging at a country club table — because product placement is better with crisp linen and champagne energy.
Enter Jack Harlow. Loudly. The rapper interrupts the serene scene from a nearby table, only to be hushed by Endrick in a fourth-wall-breaking nod to the campaign’s name. It’s a tennis ad, after all, and someone needs to uphold the sanctity of polite applause.
This marks the latest chapter in Harlow’s ongoing collaboration with New Balance, which began last May with the “Jack Harlow x New Balance 442 V2 Pro Indoor.” But this time, there are no boots — just banter, branding, and a sneaker trying to bridge performance wear and eccentric luxury.
Harlow, who boasts a social reach north of 17.8 million, is bringing his promotional chops to the rollout. With 6.5 million followers on Instagram and 5.9 million on TikTok — where he has a sky-high 15% engagement rate and averages nearly 20 million views per post — it’s less an ad and more a digital masterstroke with sneakers as the subplot.