Challenge
Building on their existing efforts – and in the congested market of headphone and portable audio devices – JBL needs to carve out a space in culture and underpin their presence with a culturally sound comms platform that inspires and speaks to their audience with conviction.
Insight
NERDS tapped into our proprietary data pool to identify and map the key cultural tensions informing the needs and desires of JBL’s strategic target. Gen-Z feel that they’re not listened to or represented by society and don't want brands marketing their world to them. They’re spoken to, not with; topics of conversation in mainstream communications aren’t relevant to them and don’t reflect their self image. What’s more, we discovered that 63% of the target audience engage weekly with ‘open’ virtual worlds via avatars, which are customised according to the virtual identity they want to project using skins, wraps and outfits.
Strategy
NERDS rebooted the existing JBL Orange Box platform to present a refreshed podcast series, fusing the strategic targets' key passion points and influences; street, gaming and meta culture, to spawn a new virtual platform for fun but honest conversations and free expression; a space where voices are heard, without restrictions or filters in a new mixed reality. The combination of cultural influences provided an ownable and defendable mixed reality platform for voices to be expressed and heard, while creating an authentic segue into web3, an environment that has limitless options for self-expression, rapidly becoming the new normal for Gen Z.
