JBL is the #1 portables and party speaker brand and they needed to launch their new line of PartyBox portable speakers in an attention-grabbing way that propels product sales and invigorates their entire Portables speaker category. JBL Lights Up The Night was conceived as a visual takeover of NYC through a series of pop culture events surrounded by spectacular OOH media, digital content, and capped by an Empire State Building transformation. Lights Up The Night manifests one of PartyBox’s most unique features – its LED front display that pulses in sync with its music output.
JBL Lights Up The Night goals: drive cultural attention and brand awareness for JBL’s new line of PartyBox speakers, engage influencers, introduce a new location for JBL Fest (moving from Las Vegas), and gain massive earned media attention for JBL, their Brand Ambassadors, and PartyBox. All the JBL attention, product reviews, and influencer content will ultimately ladder up into product sales, increased traffic to JBL product site, and to the JBL flagship store in SOHO.
Visuals that grab attention, stop the scroll, and encapsulate an idea at a glance are essential elements to reach and engage Gen Z. Cultivating awareness and attention from Gen Z, now the largest US demographic (90 Million), is essential for global audio leader JBL. This emerging cohort is the first generation raised within social apps. Gen Z discover new products, trends, and trusted resources largely through their social feeds. JBL’s overall brand strategy goal is to center JBL within culturally engaging moments at the crossroads of music, pop culture, and entertainment. A campaign built to visually amplify New York City’s iconic locations created the attention-grabbing media and social fuel needed to propel JBL’s launch campaign.
Kicking off JBL Lights Up The Night weekend of events for JBL Fest was the lighting of the Empire State Building with celebrity host Chrissy Tiegen, followed by the Light Up The Night welcome party spun by dance-pop DJ duo Two Friends. Chrissy, JBL Ambassadors, and influencers posted JBL PartyBox content throughout the night. JBL PartyBox Live was showcased the next day at JBL’s Illuminate The Block party outside JBL’s flagship SOHO store, featuring triple-threat JBL Ambassdor, Flau’jae Johnson (rapper, college basketball star, social influencer). Later that night, pop star and JBL Ambassador Madison Beer sold out Radio City Music Hall for the NYC stop on her global Spinnin Tour. Sunday afternoon, Madison headlined an exclusive fan event at the JBL SOHO store.
JBL Fest events were amplified via 17 influencers posting storytelling content throughout the weekend. Surrounding visuals included digital OOH, Times Square spectacular, Empire State Building, and TikTok OOH. And JBL expanded reach with the launch of new branded Roblox game.
JBL and PartyBox lit up stellar results. JBL created cultural currency that smashed brand awareness goals and gained 2.6B media impressions from hundreds of PR hits and “Best of” reviews. Celebrities and influencers gained 31.4M social impressions (+97% over KPI) and 5.6M total engagements (11x KPI for engagements!). All weekend, visually spectacular events drove new social content and created culture-making moments for JBL. And most tangibly, the PartyBox launch drove sustained site and store traffic, as PartyBox sales jumped +108% for this year’s new flagship product (PartyBox Stage 320).
