Objectives

Gen Z is emerging as the most important growth demographic for JBL. JBL has a +70 year legacy as a premium audio brand, but like all legacy brands, it strives to build authentic connections and relevance with Gen Z. 

Doja Cat has become an international superstar, propelled by her talent, as well as her keen use of social media. Doja is truly a social pop star, avidly followed by Gen Z. JBL saw potential magic in a collaboration and Doja agreed as she became JBL’s newest global brand ambassador.

JBL set out to build a brand relationship with Gen Z through culture-making by forging a multifaceted and full year active partnership between JBL and Doja Cat.  JBL foresaw a powerhouse collaboration with Doja Cat that crosses music, pop culture, design, and creative expression that Dares.

Beginning with the Grammy’s, the ongoing partnership goals are to:

• Forge a culture-making relationship that builds JBL as a favored Gen Z brand.
• Create a series of Doja X JBL awareness and brand building activations that reinforce the content story of this active partnership. (Grammys, summer Dare To Relive campaign, JBL Fest, and holiday season Dare To Design)
• Gain massive Earned media / social impressions.

An active, full year partnership with the ultimate goal of gaining significant Gen Z brand attention, centering JBL in a series of Gen Z cultural moments, and driving a JBL brand story in a way that’s never been done before by JBL. 

Strategy and Execution

Dare to be unexpected.  Fully embrace Doja Cat’s unexpected interests, eccentricities, and her passion to be fully herself in all moments.

We started in the most unexpected and authentic way possible – without even saying a word… instead we customized a JBL Clip 4 as the ultimate accessory. Doja was Grammy-nominated, so we made the red carpet our announcement stage. The Clip 4 is a portable speaker meant to be taken places, so we made it wearable. We took inspiration from her look designed by Versace, adorning the speaker with crystals and attaching it to Doja’s handbag with a diamond chain. From there, we let the internet do its job. Doja would tease out the partnership on social while we planned to amplify whatever she did via our virtual war room.

There were 3 components to our partnership announcement activation:

1.Doja walked the red carpet wearing the JBL Clip 4

2.Doja would post to social in real time, cheekily rebranding JBL as Jibble, Jibble, Jibble.

3.JBL took it in stride, temporarily rebranding and responding with a duet in real time, which went viral.

Bringing a full year of the Doja partnership to life. 

• JBL Grammys kick off
• JBL X Doja Sound Check
• JBL x Doja summer brand campaign – Dare To Relive
• Doja’s triumphant return at JBL Fest
• Dare to Design – Doja’s Dare To Design personalization contest.

Results

Daring to be unexpected, JBL X Doja announcement blasted off - we hooked Gen Z’s attention and engaged interest in more from JBL. TikTok’s handle chimed in “Hands down, best TikTok of the week”. 

All with zero paid dollars – over a span 12 days this Grammy Awards kickoff gained:

• 82M Social Impressions, gaining +10M Social Engagements.
• 2.8 Billion PR Impressions, with $8M in Ad Equivalent value.
• 22.4 Million TikTok Views, with enormous 24.5% engagement (5x the 4.5% avg).
• JBL x Doja TikTok #duet was viewed 13,304 hours = 2 years’ worth of time spent with JBL

Over this year, the JBL X Doja partnership lifted overall brand familiarity by 7%, as measured by a follow up Kantar brand survey.

We achieved our first year partnership goals - we had hooked Gen Z and got them interested in wanting to see more from the brand.

• Cultural breakthrough with 4.4B Earned Media PR impressions.
• Gen Z reach with 665M social media impressions.
• JBL brand engagement with these partnership efforts gaining +25M engagements.
• Doja’s Dare To Design invitation drove +1,000% gains to JBL’s Personalization portal.  

Media