Sonos wants to make every house feel like a home using the power of listening to music out loud. To promote its wireless speakers, Sonos has created listening out loud experiences by opening a flagship store in New York City and building a listening room at the Rough Trade record store in New York that’s designed in partnership with Airbnb to be like a one bedroom apartment. In fact, the Rough Trade listening room is so comfortable that Airbnb held a contest to rent out for one night. Sonos also recently announced that its products were coming to Apple Stores, complementing Apple’s emphasis on wireless audio technology and its AirPods.
Joy Howard, CMO at Sonos, recently spoke at the New York Media Festival alongside Absolut Vodka’s Afdhel Aziz about creating deep and memorable promotional experiences. For Sonos, it’s about finding spaces “where music is important and listening matters” and using music to elevate the experience.
Howard sat down with [a]listdaily to discuss creating listening out loud experiences that truly speak to audiences.
What is Sonos’ approach toward creating ideal music experiences to promote its products?
The experience that we want to create is one that’s first and foremost in the home. So what we’re trying to do outside of the home is to give people a sense of what it’s like to experience the product in their home.
In the home, we’re trying to create an experience where music is restored to the center of the home life—and a way of experiencing music that fits the way that you live: simple, seamless. One which, first and foremost, technology disappears. I think most people’s experience with music is complicated by technology, and what we want to do is create an experience where that technology disappears, and you just connect with the music.
Your co-panelist talked about using technology such as VR to create engaging experiences. Do you think Sonos would consider creating a high-tech experience to promote its products?
Not in the near term, because what we’re looking to do is get people to connect more with listening. So, I think we’re more likely to create experiences that are less mediated by technology than more mediated by it. What we found to be very powerful is just to bring people together around music, period—without a lot of other distractions.
It seems as though a lot of people see music as a personal, solitary experience. How is Sonos changing this perception?
This is a huge preoccupation of ours. Because there has been so much innovation in the way music is experienced on devices, we’re really focused on innovating on the shared experience out loud. We’re spending a lot of time thinking about how we help people almost navigate the tension between my personal experience and my shared experience with you.
What is your approach toward reaching the millennial and Gen Z demographic?
The first thing that we do is make sure that what we do is relevant. So when we’re putting paid communication in the way of a millennial or someone even younger, we’re thinking about having it be very relevant. So it needs to be based on some sort of insight that is meaningful to you, and we need to be providing some sort of information that is useful to you. And I think doing it in a way that is as relevant and least interruptive as it can be. So, [we’re] really thinking about the spaces people are moving through, where they are more receptive to a media message, and then delivering it in that space that’s really relevant.
It’s honestly the old-fashioned, tried and true way of connecting to people. Don’t be annoying, don’t be an asshole, try to be interesting, try to be relevant.
In your panel, you talked about learning to spot bad ideas early on. What are the signs of a bad idea?
Some signs of a bad idea: first it depends on a celebrity to deliver it. Second, you could swap any brand out for your own brand in that idea. Third, it’s outrageously expensive. Four, it’s really annoying (laughs).
How did the promotion with Airbnb and Rough Trade to have a rentable listening room in a record store come together?
This is how the Airbnb partnership came along, and now we’re finding all kinds of ways to activate it. So, we’re in an exploratory phase with them around the best way to activate. We’ve done three things with them already. Rough Trade is one aspect of the partnership, and we’re still exploring what most productive way to partner is.
It (the partnership) came about because the guy that leads product marketing at Airbnb used to work on Google Play Music. So he’s pretty familiar with Sonos, and that’s how I knew him. I was talking to him recently about what we could do together, and I just happened to call him right after Airbnb held its annual festival for hosts, which is called Airbnb Open. Every year, they bring hosts together and have a festival for their host community. This year, they held that festival in Paris, and they were there during the Paris attacks.
After the attacks, everyone was locked in their apartments under martial law while they were trying to find the suspects. The leadership team at Airbnb were locked in an apartment in Paris that had a Sonos system for two days, and one of the ways they passed the time was sharing music with each other—listening to each other’s playlists, talking about the different music that they had in common or they didn’t. He said that was really one of the ways that their time together became more bearable. So it just seemed natural that we would do something together after that.
The big idea for Airbnb is to make anywhere feel like home. For us, one of the things that we do is make a house feel like a home. So the idea of the partnership is: use the power of music to make anywhere feel like home.
Are you working with Apple to create listening experiences now that Sonos products are sold in Apple Stores? Are you taking advantage of Apple’s emphasis on wireless audio technology?
It sort of has been picked up naturally in the press already as a result of our announcement that we’re going to be distributed in the Apple Stores. We’re still in the early phase of that partnership. We’re really excited about the work that we’ve done already together, but I can’t comment too much about what we’re going to do in the future.
What is the most important thing to keep in mind when conveying the Sonos experience?
The most important thing is to [let people] experience it firsthand. By far, the most effective and impactful way that we can wake people wake up to the pleasure of sharing music out loud together by actually having them do it. That’s why we opened a store; that’s why we’re doing these partnerships with Airbnb where people can experience the product in their home environment.
I think most people don’t understand what the product is. So, rather than get into a big explanation of how we use your Wi-Fi to send music throughout your home, we just want people to understand that it’s very simple to use, it’s very easy to setup, and with it, you can fill your whole home with music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkjVYaBDS-c
So, what is your favorite song to share with others?
Right now, I’m really getting into Sam Cooke’s version of “A Change is Gonna Come.”
