When Jordan Saxemard, former president of Dyson’s EMEA business, took over as CMO of audio tech maker Sonos in May, his first task was to revive the brand’s cultural impact.
One way to achieve that is with a holiday marketing campaign – something Sonos hadn’t done for years. So the brand went big this year with a high-production commercial and a series of video spots called “Elves of Sound.”
The holiday campaign is “one of the first representations of that new strategy,” Saxemard told AdExchanger. “We’re focusing on what Sonos can emotionally provide our customers.”
Saxemard spoke with AdExchanger about balancing brand and performance marketing and the evolution toward a new hybrid kind of ecommerce and retail shopping.
(It was a “no comment,” though, if you’re wondering, in response to a request for more details on the new partnership between Sonos and The Trade Desk for the latter’s new ad-based operating system. Oh well.)
AdExchanger: What media and formats are you running for your holiday campaign, and are any new for you?
JORDAN SAXEMARD: Out-of-home is one of them. We’ll have digital OOH placements in New York City, Sydney, Mexico City and other places around the world.
There is also going to be a very strong social media play as part of the campaign. TikTok will be a big part of our play, as well as all our social channels and connected TV on the major streaming networks: Disney, Hulu, Paramount, Prime Video and YouTube, to name a few. There will also be web display ads.
So, it’s a full-fledged digital campaign in the broader sense. And obviously we’ll partner with some of our key retailers as well to bring that omnichannel story to life.
In your new role, how do you think about the difference between brand marketing and performance or direct response?
I think marrying the two and having the right balance is key.
Our No. 1 goal overall is to reach new customers, right? Well, and to make sure our existing customers are able to rediscover the magic of Sonos and new products.
When I look at brand and performance marketing, one doesn’t go without the other.
In the past four to five years, especially with the pandemic, the world of advertising was thrown into a hyper-drive of performance marketing. Whereas now I think that the balance needs to be brought back between brand and performance.
You can just do lower-funnel marketing, but then how are you going to get people to actually connect with your brand and learn or relearn about your brand? What I’m observing is that a lot of companies seem to be really down to the wire on performance marketing, even to the detriment of the longer-term brand goals.
It does seem like there’s been a race to the bottom in ecommerce. I could probably go to Temu and find a product that looks a lot like a Sonos product, has similar product listing details and all that, and costs like $3. Is that just a painful reality right now?
I think it’s about innovation and whether you have a clear, compelling message as a brand.
That’s how we would differentiate. Telling our story, bringing technology and being the conduit to emotions through togetherness with family, listening to music and watching shows.
Another for us is the reliability of our system. It’s up to us to make sure people know that they can count on Sonos. And we differentiate from other sellers because we listen to customers every day, on social media and elsewhere, and we want to be better every single day.
For us as marketers, it’s about explaining what value we can add to customers through our products.
What are your expectations in terms of sales this year shifting between ecommerce and in-store?
There was the boom of ecommerce and the acceleration of direct-to-consumer channels with the pandemic.
Now we’re entering the era of true omnichannel. Before, people might go to a mall. Now they’re first considering products on social media or wherever they’re getting the message, which could be through a retail partner, our marketing or an influencer. Only then does the customer decide where they want to shop.
Even when you look at some of our key retail partners, their business is also shifting to the dot-com. It’s a true omnichannel experience that consumers are looking for.
The key to unlock that is truly a hybrid model. You can’t talk about ecommerce only or physical stores in isolation. It’s not the right way of looking at things.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
