Bowers and Wilkins is a British hi-fi speaker company, and one of the most recognized names in high-performance speakers. They claim a constant pursuit of perfection, and B&W goes to great lengths (sometimes lengths that will set you back $60,000 for a pair) to ensure that their speakers make a “transparent reproduction of recorded sound.” In order to engage the audiophiles of the world, even those who may not be in the market for a $10,000 set of speakers, they needed to choose an alternate path to advertising for engaging their audience.
We had an interesting discussion around B&W at last week’s Likemind that explored their use of Twitter. Rather than using their Twitter account to announce product launches, distribute press releases, or push deals, B&W uses Twitter to present interesting articles about sound and ask its followers for their input on the debates of the industry.
As evidenced by their Twitter presence, they noticed an important commonality about their audience, that those who will want the best in speaker design are also looking to participate in the discussion and future of sound. And they don’t stop meeting this insight about their audience at Twitter, but have created their own society, dubbed “The Society of Sound,” that survives to instigate big sound conversations and share in the love for music. With fellows including Peter Gabriel and others successful in the industry and passionate in the pursuit of pure sound, the Society of Sound is a powerful testament to B&W.
From both their Twitter profile and their Society of Sound, B&W’s messaging strategy, rather than discussing the merits of their product, focuses around curating content that reinforces their brand values while delivering practical benefit to their prospects. This approach from B&W is an example of a brand that wants to mean something very specific to a select group of people rather than everything to everyone. The brand-as-curator mindset may help find platforms to communicate that are both powerful in message as well as useful to their end customer.
Around a year ago (and a spike around two years before that), the marketing blogosphere was enamored by the idea of brand utility. Brand utility had been summed up by a single epiphany from Bob Greenberg at R/GA, where he became certain that brand culture would move away from the metaphorical (as embodied in the TV spot and its interactive extensions) and toward the useful. In an approach of brand utility, said brand would forgo the common approach to advertising focused directly around benefits and instead drift towards using media to improve the usefulness of its product. Product and messaging become one in the same.
Does the B&W example qualify as brand utility? Does the utility of the brand need to relate directly with the product that you’re trying to sell, or can it simply be a different, useful set of content that reinforces your values?
Either way, B&W shows us a path for deep engagement and clear communication with our customers:
1. Learn about your target. Answer the question: what is a shared passion between your brand and your target? What is a discussion that they’re already having that you can contribute to?
2. Curate content around that discussion. Twitter seems to be a useful option given its ability for quick distribution of content. Articles, comments, questions, and branded content each have a place in the feed. Scale up your engagement by incorporating content from thought leaders, exclusive content, and even branded forums.
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