Social Listening: JBL

 The Brand I selected was JBL, this is a brand that produces all types of audio products, from headphones to portable speakers to in-home speakers. Recently JBL has received a lot of attention because of their recent Bluetooth speaker advertisement on tik tok from Doja Cat (a famous musician) which was a very unique advertisement on tik tok. I was interested in this brand because their speakers are good and I think their recent advertisement with Doja Cat is a good way to draw attention to the products they sell. I think their social medias understand all ages and are able to grab the attention of everyone, especially Gen Z on tik tok.

 

JBL’s value proposition is “We unleash the power of music so you can live life to the fullest wherever and whenever.”

 

JBL does a lot of advertising on Instagram and on a recent post user “@muhammeetcakir” commented “13.04.2022 NEWS. I got JBL TUNNE220TWS headphones, and yet the left earpiece is still dead, and it’s over again. I reported the problem with the problem, but they said they couldn’t do anything, and I wanted to be considered useless or repaired.” JBL did not reply to his comment on that Instagram post. It seems like Twitter and email is mostly where customers can contact them for help. I think they should have responded to him and if I was the customer I would be pretty frustrated. I don’t think this was a good decision for the company because it’s very beneficial when there is a lot of service within the company on social media. For example, Duolingo does a good job replying to people’s comments publicly about a ton of different topics. Which is very helpful to the customers and gives the company more attention. I think being active is important and if I was the brand manager I would check when they messaged the contact team and read what they said. Next, I would have emailed that troubled customer again and then responded on Instagram saying “Hello we reached out to you again please check your email, thank you.” And offered them some sort of in-store credit. I think not responding to hate comments or product trouble comments can be seen as rude and shows the company doesn’t engage a lot with customers online. 

 

Another bad thing someone said is on Twitter “@JBLaudio second pair of headphones I’ve bought keep disconnecting for no reason. Factory reset and forgotten then re-added to my device multiple times. Never going to buy another jbl product again.” This was commented by “@PapayaRd1911.” This time JBL did respond to this person saying “Hi there. We’re sorry to hear about your headphones. Kindly send us a DM with the exact model of your JBL device so we can provide some troubleshooting steps for your device.” I think this was helpful to the customer and shows JBL is active on Twitter. 

One person posted a nice comment on a Doja Cat ad promotion on tik tok and said “This is how you do an AD” said by user “@sillygeorgie” which was left under the Doja Cat ad on Tik Tok. That comment got 139,500 likes. I think on tik tok there is a lot more engagement and interaction with customers, unlike on Instagram. On tik tok and Twitter, comments are a big part of the platform for JBL while on Instagram there are not as many comments on videos and photos posted.

 

On social media platforms like Twitter, Tik Tok, and Instagram JBL is trying to sell its audio services, in-home speakers, Bluetooth portable speakers, and headphones. They also sell audio products for their professional branch of the company which includes audio for tours and studios as well as car, DJ, and cinema markets. On their website, they promote all of these products. 

 

 

I think JBL is a very popular audio brand but lately has been facing a marketing challenge of engaging with customers, building brand recognition, and expanding sales. To try and fix these problems they brought on Doja Cat to be a sponsor. The ad promotion that caught my eye for this assignment was from Doja Cat on her tik tok account about a JBL Bluetooth speaker. In the video which will be linked, she is filming off her phone while getting ready for the Grammy’s and holds up her JBL Bluetooth speaker and says “jibble jibble jibble” and then eats a piece of chicken and smiles. This was posted on her account. On the video, JBL’s tik tok account commented “we will now only be referred to as JIBBLE” which got 193,400 likes.

I think this was a good decision and marketing strategy because it fed off of Doja where she says “jibble jibble jibble” instead of JBL. JBL also changed the bio of their tik tok account to say “jibble jibble jibble.” This was a good decision for the company because having Doja Cat just post a video with one of their Bluetooth speakers just eating chicken as she is getting ready for the Grammys was genius. Usually, celebrities post an ad promotion video explaining why the product is good and why they should get it, but instead JBL had Doja Cat be random like she usually is and film off her phone on tik tok. This gave it a nice relatable feel because she was just using her phone camera and being goofy. JBL did a good job having Doja Cat do an ad promotion on her tik tok because it got a total of 20.2 million views, which helps build brand recognition. People like me are going to talk about it with friends because it’s funny and grabbed people’s attention. A lot of people sent it to their friends, it has 21,100 shares. This tik tok also helped some people connect with each other and discuss JBL and their brand because there were a lot of comments and replies to each other about how much they love the brand.

From this assignment, I learned about taking a brand and its social media and analyzing it in a marketing way, by seeing how it made customers feel in the comment sections. I had the opportunity to share on my blog how JBL has caught my attention recently and explain my thoughts about their current marketing strategy.