Transcript

Bennie F. Johnson

Hello, and thank you for joining us for a special episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations of individuals that flourish at the intersection of marketing and the unexpected.

We will introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know. Through our thought-provoking conversations, we unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, my special guest is a dear friend and supporter of marketing worldwide, Chris Epple. Chris is the vice president of marketing for Harmon, overseeing consumer marketing, media, PR, digital and social and retail marketing for all of North, South and Central America. His leadership roles span globally recognized brands such as JBL, Harman Kinnon, AKG. He’s expanded the company’s Gen Z outreach through partnerships. His leadership roles expand globally recognized brands such as JBL, Harmon Kardon, and AKG. He’s expanded the brand’s Gen Z outreach through dynamic partnerships that cover culture and gaming. He also launched JBL campus, an initiative for college age students to learn to be influencers. Notably, he spearheaded groundbreaking partnerships between JBL and their 2023, 2024 brand ambassador, none other than Doja Cat, and is now working with global superstar, Vincent Boone.

Prior to Harmon International, Chris has held multiple marketing positions across A&E networks, including leading marketing for the History Channel. He’s helped product and brand marketing posts at PepsiCo and Kraft Food, having spent over a decade in food and beverage marketing. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Epple 

Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. Happy New Year.

Bennie

Well, happy new year. It’s a great way to start off. And you know, you’re in good company of a podcast when you start off, if you can say Doja Cat and Benson Boone, the first couple of days of the year. So yeah, we’re going to start off with that. You know, you’ve had experience in marketing with Pepsi and craft and now Harmon, you know, music and culture are really a throughput in each and all of those brands in their spaces.

Chris 

Ha ha ha. May it bring a smile to everyone’s face.

Bennie

How is it to wake up in the morning and go, you know, my brand and my marketing is going to tie into Benson Boone?

Chris

Yeah, I mean, it comes with a strategy. You know, I’d say when you think about the job of a marketer, you know, our job is to connect brands. Our job, first and foremost, is to figure out what your consumers need, what’s important to them, whether it’s articulated or inarticulated needs. And then what are the right ways to deliver against those needs, whether through product innovation, what features and benefits you create. But then also, how do you then connect your brand with culture and make it relevant for that consumer? So it starts by really understanding who your consumer is, what makes them tick, and what’s relevant for them. And in the case of some of the brands that you’ve mentioned that I’ve worked at, cultural entry points like music, like sports, like gaming really resonate, especially now with a brand like JBL, which is so focused on Gen Z as its key consumer cohort. So Benson, Doja, any number of the artists we’ve worked with over the last many years have really been a part of connecting this brand that creates audio output to the people who create the inputs into those headphones and speakers.

Bennie

Right. That there’s just this great audio synergy and just cultural synergy when you start to have those influencers that are just a part of extension of your brand. One of the things that I’ve been really impressed about is your creation of your influencer program. Talk a bit about understanding you’re working through your direct consumer cohort to actually amplify your consumer cohort. Talk a bit about that.

Chris

Exactly. Yeah, so, you know, funny enough or not, it was the year right before COVID and we created this on campus. It was a very physical, very on campus, present program called JBL campus. And what it was was a way to create influence amongst influencers. So go in, find people that are relevant on campus, whether it be through their social following or through activation or activities that they’re doing.

Maybe it’s a sports team they’re on. Maybe they’re the captain of the debate team. But they’re people of relevance within campuses and work with them to help drive the JBL brand, brand loyalty, brand love on their campus. It started very much, like I said, a physical program when we were on campus, tabling events, show up here, do this, sample. And then with COVID, we obviously, like everyone else, had to pivot. And we turned it then into much more of a social media-based program, and using the power of creators. So we turned influencers into creators, creating content from their home, from their dorm, from wherever they may be on their campus that was JBL relevant for their audiences. And the beauty of that also, when you think about this collective of college students, you have a very targetable audience. have similar likes, first of all, geographically, right? They’re all on this campus. Similar teams they probably like, probably similar, you behaviors based on the campus and culture. So there’s a lot of similarities around the people that you’re targeting by doing that.

Bennie

Right. You sit in there and you look up, how does this group now inform your next moves? know, as you’re in your team or sitting back and a big part of your business is really riding that trend to what’s next. How has this kind of direct line helped you?

Chris

Yeah. You know, we’ve used it in as much as these. So first, as you mentioned, we created an influencer program. We’re trying to help guide them to be as strong of influencers as they can. So we have a brand camp, we’ve got brand guidelines, we teach them, you know, content creation. So we try to actually be a part of their solution. But then as they’re creating, we’re also and working with us, we’re listening to them.

We’re asking them, we’re asking them what artists are popping for you, what fashion trends are relevant for you. So we’re actually taking that information and trying to, like I said before earlier, like listen and use that information to figure out what’s relevant for our audience. So they’re also helping us guide our future, like you said, and figure out what’s next for us.

Bennie

Right. When we think about the power of influence, I’m going to take this moment and pivot back to when you were in college. What tips the skills for you to kind of lean you towards a career marketing?

Chris

My answer goes back earlier than that. I used to mow the lawn of the CMO of a big packaged goods brand when I was like 13, 14 years old. And one day, and she had all this cool stuff and swag and POP and displays up. And one day I literally stopped the lawn mower and I said, can you explain what you do? Cause I’m so, it’s so interesting to me. I remember she had like an athlete, she had done something. It was like in a grocery store and she had taken the POP home.

And was like in the window, it was like a basketball player. And I was like, what do you do? And that was my first day that I fell in love with marketing. And, you know, I think a lot of people look to find their way and college is one of the best places there is to do that. I’m one of the 0.001% who at 13 years old with a mouthful of braces knew exactly what I was going to do and have never deviated since.

Bennie

Wow, that’s amazing that you saw the POP there like what do you do? So question, does your son know what you do now?

Chris

Nope. Yeah, exactly. My boys are well aware of what I do and now they’re both the target. So that makes it even more interesting. They are my audience. I don’t do the, I try really hard not to do the, my son said in meetings because again, the reality also you have to be, you have to, we all know this, but like it’s a collective, right? When I live in New York and we call it, know, this is the entire country of states.

Bennie

Right? Right.

Chris

That we need to build the collective of what our audience is. The audience isn’t a sample of one in a county in New York. It’s the whole, in my personal remit, the North American consumer, the South American consumer, the Mexican Central American consumer. So I’m building three sets of strategies for our audience.

Bennie

So when you think about that in this kind of subset of a global engagement, what are some of the similarities you’re seeing in terms of communities and what are some of the kind of innovation deviation points?

Chris

Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I mean, we’re definitely seeing that much more than say a millennial cohort, millennials really kind of like followed the leader. We’re seeing with Gen Z, they’re much more around individualism and self-expression. And so out of that micro communities, I’m finding to be if more, if not, or equal to, if not more powerful than the massive communities, right? So there’s a trend that everyone’s chasing, but then like you’ve got something like, you know, a little small micro community with a certain behavior, a certain action that are bubbling up to create their own, you know, maybe midsize communities. I find that much more than the old like, kind of follow the leader or just do what one person says, go get a shirt at Gap, because everyone got a shirt at Gap like in the 90s, Doing things a little bit differently.

Bennie

Right. It’s so interesting. I was having a conversation probably about a year and a half about micro communities and influence. And when I look back at the conversation, the conversation predicted the success of K-pop Demon Hunters. And it just blows my mind because I was having that conversation about micro communities and this was the space of young kids who were engaged in K-pop, and was all these intersections of it. At the time you’re having this conversation, really cool, thought nothing of it. Skip ahead here for like, my, and it was something that was called out in the insights and the data that was looking at how micro communities form and norm and create expression.

Chris

Wow. Yeah. Sure, sure, makes sense, right? Why would you not, yeah.

And that actually says it perfectly. It’s exactly what it is. It’s, and one of the things, and part of why I love marketing too is 90% of it you can’t see coming. So it’s like, who would have ever predicted that? Right. And that’s the beauty of it. And that’s why, you know, really a big part of our job is listening because you’ve got to be listening. You’ve got to be very open and aware and willing to say, I don’t know the answer.

Bennie

Yep. Exactly. You know, from a metaphor, it’s really interesting for you because so much of your business is about amplifying. It’s about taking the sound and pushing out, right? When you think about it, what’s the story that you tell now for JBL in kids’ lives, in young adults’ lives?

Chris

Yeah, that’s really good. Yeah. Yeah, mean, so we have a very strong point of view. It’s not an official tagline, but it’s making voices heard. So our job is to make the voice of Gen Z be heard. We are the amplification vehicle for that. So we really try to use JBL as a way to give Gen Z a platform, or all consumers, platform to tell their story. And, you know, certainly I think a lot of that we’re seeing indicate, lead indicators for Gen Alpha will be very similar. But we’re a brand that wants to help tell that story. Another place we’ve gone recently is into emerging music. So we have the JBL Music Academy. We have Martin Garrix as the face of that. So it’s the Garrix Music Academy. And what we’re doing is we’re helping emerging artists.

Also songwriters, producers, people behind the scenes, not just the ones with great voices or great timing for us DJs, but people who are behind the creation of music. So we’re actually trying to give an amplification vehicle to people who are trying to tell their story through music.

Bennie

Wow. And it was just really, when you think about the dynamism of going from just the brand ambassador to creating the creators to now saying that we have a space in helping to have the next generation music spaces. Now, when you think about this, we talked a bit about… North, South, Central America in the conversation. I’m curious, you know, as we talk about the new artists or ways of approaching music and experience in a natural North American sense, what are you seeing in South America?

Chris

The idea that there’s, I mean, I think musically, I mean, it’s certainly the local influence is so key. But then you take someone like Carol G, who we’ve worked with. And she is just, we did a collab with her. Obviously her roots are through South America, but we’re just seeing her success in North America. And so I would say if anything, the Latin culture is having a bigger impact on the US culture musically then I think we’re seeing it the other way around. You know, have your handful of artists that they go and they sell out in, it’s called American artists selling out in South America, Central America. But now you see what like a Bad Bunny is doing or like I said, Carol G. And it’s just, it’s staggering the results of that. And it’s so exciting to see. I’m loving those music trends.

Bennie

Right. Yeah. It’s amazing that Carol G. was talking about having a moment, right, in terms of this and all of the work that goes along with it. You know, I think you pointed on something that we’ve all known this and felt this. All music is always local, right? Kind of our expression, it’s always local. You know, it’s just that we sometimes grow up in spaces where we’re fortunate. We live in a community where our local becomes the national but it’s always local. I remember watching a documentary last year about hip hop, and it was interesting talking to folks who were growing up in New York at the moment, where this was the local music, but it was expressed nationally. And they never thought about it as anything else but their local music. The tension came in when the rest of us in the world started to make hip hop our own.

Chris

Mm-hmm. Yep. Sure, sure. look at me, have East Coast, like literally, to your point, it’s literally labeled geographically, East Coast, West Coast, Atlanta Sound. Like it literally has a geography in front of the kind of the labeling of it.

Bennie

Right. But what I love is that it’s all the same inputs that are coming in, but just mixed up a bit differently and you end up with a different outcome. All the same inputs, right?

Chris

Well, yeah, Quincy Jones, I won’t say his quote right, but he once said, or I’m sure he said on multiple occasions, there’s never in the history of time ever been more bars or sounds. There’s never been more notes added. And so with that number of finite number of notes for the dawn of civilization, all that music that’s been created has been through a finite number of notes.

Bennie

Right? Yeah. There it is. So when you think about, you know, kind of these breakthroughs, we talk about the G moment in there, we talk about Bad Bunny, who’s gonna have a huge stage in just a couple of weeks, even larger than we had before. What do you think this means for brand ambassadors in a more dynamic future of music?

There was a point in time when you and I were young where music stopped at borders and you had to be extremely cool to be able to have a relative or family member or travel to bring back this experience, question of the word. Now, there’s no break in geography or border, therefore no break for your brand.

Chris

Yeah. And I’m sure you mean this with technology too, because technology has enabled that. I mean, we do listening parties virtually now. So some of our artists will do a listening party down in Brazil for an artist that they’re not even at the concert, because you can do that now. So I do think that the term I’d probably use is… It’s not always just the music, it’s the experience that you’re creating. I think it’s around to your question of like, you know, how do brands react? I think it’s around creating the right experiences with the use of artists and sound as the reason to believe. But it’s really everything to me starts with the consumer and what’s the right experience for them. That’s going to resonate.

Bennie

So since your time with Pepsi, using that as just a flash point to where you’re at today, what are some of the changes you’ve seen in that consumer aptitude for the experience?

Chris

You know, it’s gone up and down because when we were Pepsi, you know, it was during very much in the heart of kind of millennial marketing. And it was really around the collective. It was around the big moments like Super Bowl, as your example. I don’t know if I can say that, know, those big those big cultural, like individual moments. I think, you know, COVID certainly changed the way we even appreciate how we spend time with each other and our and our circles. You could do it virtually. Right. I mean, this environment where we’re doing right now as a podcast, video podcast, didn’t exist. It wasn’t even a thought, before technologies enabled it. Now I think you’re able to have cross-border conversations and social media has allowed things that happen in one country. We’re having a moment right now with JBL. There’s been two, this one last year with Fetty Wap, where someone created a mashup of a historical moment with the JBL speaker.

And that was coming in different languages, was coming with different cultural moments, that had happened in different parts of the world. Now, just recently, there’s been this thing, it’s been all over the internet, where a JBL speaker washed ashore months later, and it’s covered in barnacles and such. And that actually happened in Brazil three months ago, and had its viral moment then. And it has now surfaced up here in the US. So, you know, it’s really interesting. It’s around always, always keeping your ears open, your eyes open to what’s going on because stuff’s happening so much more quickly than it used to.

Bennie

Yeah, and these ways in which we can have a moment that is personal in our time, but it’s still connected to the mass. I’m thinking about like when streaming shows and seasons drop, there’s space that comes into it. Like we’re all a part of it, yet we’re in our own little separate spaces.

Chris

Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, no, you’re totally right. I remember we’d all go around the TV to watch that one episode of a show because it was only on Thursday at 8 p.m. Right now it’s like, hey, did you catch the final? That’s like even the way you talk about TV changes because you have to make sure the person didn’t see the episode yet because this one binge it, but this one hasn’t caught up yet.

Bennie

We had that over the holidays with our family in the space in there. So the big, for this moment, just to date us in time in a space in there, was everything, every conversation is all things stranger things. And there’s a conversation of catching up, of being too far ahead, but everyone’s in this moment, so at least for the next few weeks, you’re in the culture mode.

Chris

Yeah, we were on a family trip to the Caribbean and all of sudden, whatever time it was like four people just disappeared. And it was when they dropped the episode and I remember my son saying, wait, just don’t tell me what happens. I’m going to watch it when you get back. Like just it’s also the way you consume. Right. Everyone consumed on a fairly similar size TV. Right. Now it’s well, I’m OK watching it from my phone. But my son said, I want to watch it through the sound bar and the big TV. And like everyone has their way in which they watch content and the way you consume it is so different by individual.

Bennie

It’s so funny we talk about that. My son and I have had a tradition to watch Knives Out series together, but yet we’ve never watched it in the same room. He did the exact same thing. I watched it on a large TV. He went to watch it on his tablet. And every few minutes he paused and come in and discuss what’s happening and then go back. So, but as far as the record shows, we’ve watched it together. All three installments.

Chris

That’s cool. I gotcha, yep. That’s cool. Mm. Well, can tell you, so, you know, I brought up a comment earlier that one of the most important jobs you have as marketers is to listen to our consumers. So we took that exact insight we’re talking about here. And in our in all of our products now, we have something called Oracast, where you can seamlessly just press a button and sink in, listen together, share music moments together even just a playlist, whatever it is, all listed at the same time through this Oracast technology. And it’s not just because we stumbled upon a cool technology, but because we knew this was important to consumers.

Bennie

Right. Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I’d love to talk a bit. We’ve talked about brands across geographic space. I love to dig a little bit about the brand across generation. You know, so much of our conversation has been a multi-generational, our expressions of how we connect with our family and our children, how they connect with us through the space. You’re really the JBL brand and all of the equipment. It’s really a conduit for that.

Chris

Yeah. Yeah. We talk a lot about lifetime value that we create maximum lifetime value. So if you think about start, take this JBL campus program, right? So if you start from college, that’s what do you need in college? You need a flip, you need a pair of over your headphones, and you probably need some, some earbuds to run with, right? So you get that mid tier price point products. Then you’re going to graduate, you’re going to go get your first apartment, you’re going to need a sound bar, but it’s going to be a small apartment. So you’re to get a small sound bar and maybe you’ll get a little bit of a better portable speaker, maybe you’ll get a multi-room speaker. Maybe you’ll upgrade now because you travel a little bit to some lighter weight headphones. Then you buy that house, right? And you get the car. Now you need speakers for the car. Now you need a system for your home, right? But as the homeowner now, you’re probably having kids who need the junior headphones, who then go to college and start the whole virtuous cycle right over again.

Bennie

Right. Right. Right.

Chris

So we do talk about a maximum lifetime value that JBL can provide. I mean, all of our products can provide.

Bennie

So what’s the dream JBL set up?

Chris

I mean, it would be looking through my world, it would be someone and consumers who are thinking about how JBL can compliment every moment of their life. So they wake up, they shut off the JBL alarm, they go in the shower, they put the waterproof Bluetooth speaker on, they come out of the shower, they put the multi-room on or the sound bar, because they’re watching today, know, whatever show they watch in the morning, they put JBL on their car, or if they’re on the subway, their headphones and you look back and whether you even realize it or not, JBL has been with you from the minute you woke up to the minute you went to sleep.

Bennie

I think that’s a beautiful arc of kind of brand clarity and showing up in those moments. Now how do you make sure that that’s understood? Because it seems like you might have a challenge of it is so seamless. I’m sitting here thinking as we’re talking through, I’m looking through and I’m nodding as you go through. like, OK, I know I’ve got my JBL speaker here, I’ve got my space over there. But then I wonder sometimes, do I think brand first or is it so much a part of this reliable experience that I have? How do you keep your brand front and center in that?

Chris

I really like the way you said that. I don’t subscribe to the idea that brands need to get up and tell you that you need to spend your whole day with us. I mean, I think… we should provide a meaningful enough experience and brand value that you actually look up and realize you did it. There are other brands, competitive brands even, that are part of ecosystems that you buy into the ecosystem. And I aspire to the point to time when you don’t even realize that you’re just continuing to build your JBL daily ecosystem. And through our, we have a JBL one app now where all the devices can connect and you could track and update and all of such. That’s when the magic’s happening, when it’s happening organically versus us telling you to do it.

Bennie

Yeah, it’s when no space is in there. have that. During the pandemic, one of the things we did was we finished the basement bathroom. That was something. So my family, had a we had to sit down. What did we need to have during the pandemic? We needed better internet speed. Yes. And we realized we need an additional bathroom because the number of people in the house at the same time. But in that process, I had a chance to sit down and come up with a plan. I found out that there was a product that a certain company made that allowed me to have a speaker in the bathroom in the full shower area. And building that, and it became kind of this central feature of the new bathroom, was this kind of order-proof JBL experience.

Chris

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We found a lot of people because we have our light up speakers too. We’ve got a of people love to put those in their shower because you lost a lot of those moments of going out and joy outside and clubs and bars, all things that are closed, right? So people found even just a little fun putting a light show on there in their shower because you’re like, look, I’m getting a moment of smiling because the world was very different. Nope, nope.

Bennie

Yeah. Right? OK, so I’m not strange. Right towards the mediator there. So yes, when you think about looking down the line, though, we’ve talked about the older consumers like ourselves who are like, hey, when I get my new car, I need to make sure that I the upgraded speaker system. I’ve got a space of which I own in there.

Chris

You’re kind of going right towards the meeting, which is great. We love it.

Bennie

You know, what’s happening in the mindset of the youngest consumers? I know in my household, I have a gen alpha right on the border. She completes, she will not accept that she’s gen alpha. And if she hears me saying this, she’ll be mad at me. She’s not. But technically, if you do the math, she’s right on the edge. But I know that her consumption patterns are different.

Chris

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Bennie

As you kind of move the brand forward in there, what are some of the things that you’re looking out for as these consumption patterns change or influence by you?

Chris

Yeah, I we’re, I will stand behind this term all day long is that we’re always listening, we’re always watching. There was this great, I had an old CMO once who said to me, you have more ears and eyes than you do mouths for a reason. So use the power of your two eyes and your two ears as much as you can.

So we’re always observing and understanding kind of what’s next. And we’re starting to see some of the nuances. I think when you have the bleeding, so the end of Gen Z and the beginning of Gen Alpha, there’s usually not a ton of difference. Now that Gen Alpha is starting to establish itself as its own cohort, and they’re of age now, right? You’re able to talk to them and articulate with them and ask them real questions. We’re starting to learn, similarly, what are your real emotions? What are the things that worry you most?

What are you looking for most? We’re finding one interesting tidbit was that Gen Alpha were by definition a lot younger when the kind of the lockdown and COVID happened. So developmentally, it’s been a different audience, whereas Gen Z, many of them were just a little bit past sort of the age where they had already been in third grade and fourth grade and learn how to interact with teachers and adults. So it’s interesting observing. I find the best marketers want to be anthropologists and they want to be cultural anthropologists. So we’re spending a lot of time, we’re psychologists. I’ll hire a psychologist anytime. I think they know us. They make great marketers. So really just understanding what are their fears and worries and how can we help them.

Bennie

So when you think about partners, it’s a big part of how you deliver. What really defines a great partnership for you? Who are you looking to work with? I’m going go brands first, and then we’ll circle back to people. But I’m really curious. When you have such a storied brand, and you’re really kind of clear on who you are, where you are, and who you’re for, what makes a good partner for you?

Chris

You when you talk about that people or like brands? So actually, funny enough, I don’t know if you meant to do this, but you have answered the question. Brands, no, we love working with brands who know who they are and have a clear identity for what they believe their consumer is and what their goals are. We’ve gotten into partnerships with brands that are just kind of on the way up or even like a little bit at having a moment of like, who are we, identity crisis. And we find those partnerships to have a very hard time to get approvals, to get alignment, to kind of share like, where are we going here? When a brand has a clear identity, and I believe JBL has a clear identity, when we sit down the conversation is so much more thoughtful because it’s like, okay, are we going down the same lane? Are we both driving the same speed? We both at the same end location that we’re trying to get to? Or are you trying to get off the exit ramp and I’m still want to go another mile? You have to make sure first and foremost that you have shared qualities and consumers, which is so, so critical to a successful partnership.

Bennie

Right. Yeah, I love the way that you all, you don’t kind of half step in going into your partnerships. I think about the creator program and a global space in there. That’s all innovation, right? And that’s when brands get nervous. When there are new things on the edge, like, I don’t know yet, but you all have been able to really kind of lean in. And I thought, you know, it’d be really powerful to hear that. Like what drives that kind of confidence in finding the right partners there?

Chris

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, for us, definitely, we’re probably a little bit longer on the upfront, like having the conversations and the call it the interview stage or the dating stage, because it’s around getting to that place of like shared values, which is so, so critical and making sure and seeing through the whole, just want to get a partnership done. Like, no, like really, what are you trying to accomplish brand X, brand Y?

Bennie

Okay. Okay. Right. Well, I love the kind of just how diverse and how breakthrough the partnerships are. You know, one of the friend of the podcast, we got a chance to spend some time with the commissioner of NASCAR. And I know you guys are NASCAR technology partner in there, you know, but in one conversation, you don’t expect to hear Doja Cat and NASCAR. But yet it makes sense.

Chris

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we happen to be quite a diverse technology company. So in our case, yeah, with the massive automotive side of our business, we are powering.

We are power and towering technology within the NASCAR space. Now down in Central America, we actually are partnered more with NASCAR Mexico and working with racers down there. So we have a driver there. So we actually have an expanded relationship. We’ve had partnerships with F1 more on the enablement side and technology side as well. So we’ve kind of dabbled in and out of different parts of the racing world.

Bennie

Okay. So, you know, as you partner with the actual personality in the razor and the athlete, right, because it’s really kind of that blending of the personality of the athlete face. What cultural lessons are you taking from that in terms of the successes you’ve had with a personality? Kind of, love that because it’s an all in personality. They’re the personality, they’re the athlete, it’s the technology and the delivery. You’re hitting on all the areas of the business. What lessons do you have that for brands to find those moments and to really drive them, pun intended, forward?

Chris

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, first and foremost, it’s really I think brands need to understand exactly what they’re very clear on their objectives of what they’re trying to do, because it’s so easy. We get calls all day long. Every market gets calls all day long being pitched sponsorships and partnerships. But and everyone, by the way, everyone, every one of the ideas is the best idea ever. But if you don’t have a clear vision for where you’re going to go, you’re going to have a really hard time filtering out what doesn’t work for you.

Bennie

Right. Right. Hahaha

Chris

So JBL from, you know, circa 2000 or 2015 through maybe 2021 were all about the biggest moments in culture. So we were president of the Super Bowl. We were at the NBA All-Star game. We were at the Grammys. That was the vision for where the brand wanted to be at that time. We’ve changed that. So now we have a, you know, we have a little saying that leagues give you scale. Teams give you local relevance. Players tell stories. And we are hyper-focused right now on the stories that athletes, musicians, gamers, the stories they have to tell. That’s the stories we want to help amplify.

Bennie

Mm-hmm. I think it’s a powerful throughput for you, right? Because the stories that individual story, it shows up with the athlete. It shows up in the team and the community. And it shows up. If you’ve done it right, it shows up in the throughput of the biggest stage. You know,

Chris

Sure, sure, they bring it with them. I mean, like, if you look through culture, you see athletes, musicians, et cetera, with JBL party boxes or boom boxes with them. just these pop up in social. These aren’t things we pay for. We don’t ask that for that to happen, right? They happen because it’s an organic moment with a brand that they’ve connected with. That’s, again, it kind of falls into that like special moment, special sauce that you try to, the magic you try to create.

Bennie

Now what do you do from a structural standpoint, from a marketing infrastructure standpoint, to make sure you’re ready and able to see, receive, and amplify these moments?

Chris

Yeah, yeah, I mean, community management on the social side certainly plays a big role in that. Also working with our influencers closely and building relationships with them so that we’re a little closer to what’s going on. They, like when they’re calling us to say, hey, we’re traveling out to a tournament, I need a new pair of headphones. That’s a great moment for us. It costs a couple of bucks, but it’s a great moment for us because it means that they’ve built that connection. They go, I know I need JBL on this flight or for our locker room. We get that a lot. So, really trying to build those relationships with our athletes, but then also having the infrastructure on the social side and the influencer side to make sure we’re able to react. Sometimes even paid media on the size and scale of the moment.

Bennie

Yeah those moments in there. So, you know, we’ve mentioned a lot in connecting the brand to Gen Z, but something that, you know, it’s showing up even in the press and the conversation, the way that you start to think about how the brand shows up. was just commenting that before reading Ad Age’s coverage of the work that you guys have done.

And kind of really putting your front and center in a space in which storytelling has changed for the space. When we were in school, the different athletes couldn’t tell their own story.

Chris

Yeah. Yeah, the platforms they have now to tell their stories. It’s so fascinating. Remember even when Player’s Tribune came out, some of these platforms gave athletes a chance for the athlete, by the athlete. It’s allowed for there to be a whole new world. These college influence, NIL, the way that whole world has evolved, has allowed there to be a whole new generation of people able to tell their story.

Bennie

Right. But what I love is, and what you’re able to do is, those intersections within the stories. Because at one point in time, the story had to be about the sport, the skill, the space you were known for. And now we have a space in which we can tell these multi-dimensional stories.

Chris

Yeah, so you asked the question earlier about how we pick our partnerships and it’s the same thing with athletes. We don’t look at the stat sheet.

And I don’t care if you scored 30 or three last night, it’s early in the stories you have to tell. And what are you doing with your community? How are you using social? What kind of content are you creating? Like that’s, that’s so much more interesting as a marketer than, yeah, I looked at the back of the baseball card too. And so did you. And so this player hits more home runs than this player. So sign this one. No, this one actually has a better story to tell. So that’s where the strategy of connecting with culture becomes so much more relevant than the stat sheet or the music, downloads or gaming kills or whatever your craft is.

Bennie

Right, know, when people can confuse metrics with culture. You know, the metrics are, you know, you think about it from a branding perspective, how many years did we see in the NFL, the most popular brands weren’t the teams that were the most successful teams? For a period of time, there’s a cultural part that was missed. Meaning, the Raiders and the Cowboys used to lead.

Chris

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bennie

Jersey sales for years and both of them and I can say this living in Washington DC. The Cowboys were horrible. It’s coming in there, you know, it’s it’s in the contract my friend. It’s in the writer Chris. I have to. Good NFC East you have to ding the Cowboys, but there’s a point in time in which there was a cultural relevance that was there that had nothing to do with the X’s and O’s or wins and losses.

Chris

I was waiting for it. Hahaha. Right, right. Now, for sure. Yeah. And we’ve found that I think, you know, I mentioned JBL kind of, you know, late late 2000, 18, 19, 20, 21. We probably were focused more on the stat sheet. And you start with the stat sheet as the filter. Then you kind of worked your way down. And now we work our way from the stories, social platforms, content creation. And then, oh, and by the way, they’re really good at their craft. Like it’s flipped the game on us.

Bennie

Right. How is that, how has your team responded to that? It seems like there’s a new energy with that, but.

Chris

Yeah, oh yeah, we love it. was an adjustment for all of us, myself included. It really, though, opened up an entirely new way to think about marketing, which I think excited marketers are inherently curious. Good marketers are inherently curious, right? People that want to just do the same job every day and never kind of change or pivot. Usually marketing isn’t the right path for them. And we find that curious marketers often succeed.

Bennie

I love that. Curious marketers often succeed. So are there any moments where you’re on the cutting edge of pushing your brand and pushing culture? Talk for me a minute and share. Any times it’s been uncomfortable to be right there on the edge.

Chris

Yeah, I mean, you know, probably one of the best times was during COVID because we weren’t sure how far to take the celebration. You know, because while you were celebrating, forget people were on ventilators and people were losing their lives. So we were struggling with how much we wanted to tell the pop culture entertainment side of the brand. Probably one of the more proud moments as a marketer, I remember, was during that time, we actually pivoted and we realized that you were talking about your bathroom. A lot of kids, especially in inner cities or in apartment living lifestyles couldn’t actually study because they had two or three people in a bedroom together. So we did a headphone handout. So each of our ambassadors were given an allotment of several hundred thousand headphones to give out to people from the communities in which they grew up in. And they sent little vignettes out. And we did it through the same groups that handed out the food because we knew that by definition, those are folks that were probably a little less economically of lower economic means. So they handed out headphones.

And we handed out several thousand pairs of headphones to let kids go home and study. Again, it was like, we were all just like, and then actually I remember also at the end of it, asking ourselves, when is it okay to celebrate again? And so that was probably the most uncomfortable memory I have as a marketer.

Bennie

Wow. You know, it blows me away when we have this conversation and you know, we knew we were going to talk the last few weeks, but I never thought we were going to have a conversation that talked about listening in such a profound way. You know?

Chris

Yeah, yeah, it’s a core part of being successful in marketing.

Bennie

Well, Chris, I can’t believe we’re at the end of our time, but I can believe the success you’re having in thinking about JBL and the work that you do as a brand in a different way. This kind of proactive listening as the first step in amplifying is amazing. I continue to encourage you, my friend. I’m going to look to you so you can tell me who’s going to be the hippest next.

Chris

Yeah. Yeah.

Bennie

You guys got a good track record here in amplifying what we see in culture of gaming, culture of food and entertainment, in music and in life.

Chris

We’ve got some good people on this team, so they have some good fortune tellers.

Bennie

Well, we’ll continue to listen and we’ll continue to find the stream in which music amplification, culture and marketing are part of all of our lives. Chris, I can’t thank you enough for being a part of our little podcast here and having this conversation.

Chris

Exactly. And they loved it. Bennie, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Bennie

And those who are listening, you know, we encourage you to find out more about marketing and the campus program at JBL through AMA.org and through JBL’s Campus Creator program. We encourage you to reach out to Chris and his team and watch what they’re doing as they change the way we think about brands and culture in our world. Thank you for joining us.

Chris

Absolutely.