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Kiran Aditham is a Business Management grad from the University of Central Florida, Aditham earned his stripes as a freelance writer in music/arts publishing.

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Play Detective or Flaunt Your Ride with Pod Design Campaigns

Written on
Jun 14, 2006 
Author
Kiran Aditham  |
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Play Detective or Flaunt Your Ride with Pod Design Campaigns

From the looks of it, Pod Design has been awfully busy in recent months. The Boston-based interactive agency has just rolled out not one, but two major branding campaigns that will likely appeal to two distinct audiences.

The first marketing push, for high-end entertainment system retailer Tweeter, emphasizes the company’s recent move into the mobile space. While the traditional realm has been good to Tweeter thanks to the chain’s fat-walleted, mostly adult constituents, Tweeter Mobile is aimed squarely at the kids—kids being the high school to college set that’d much rather show off bumping sound systems in vehicles than flat screens in their living rooms.

Traditionally, Tweeter’s had a really good positioning for the mobile space, too, because of the car installs,” Pod Design creative director Steve Curran tells ADOTAS. “But that business has changed over the last few years. The rise of the regional “Pimp my Ride” stores has cut into the business, where people might perceive they’re going to get more expert service from a local installer than a chain.”

So Pod assuaged Tweeter’s worries with a Flash/HTML hybrid site that is both enticing and educational for the 14-and-up audience. “It was a little bit of a brand challenge for [Tweeter], it’s a very different culture and they’re talking to–this audience that starts dreaming about the $10,000 stereo system they’re putting in the $10,000 car. They start dreaming about this at the age of 14 or 15. It’s a very specific window that you’re appealing to, this audience that they have nothing to spend their money on except this kind of stuff. They don’t have to worry about having a family or buying a house.”

While Pod installed the standard set of branded goodies, including wallpapers and music downloads, the agency upped the ante by offering both a downloadable videogame called “Drive” (functional for both PC and MAC), and a personal audio installation tech named Johnny (who, by the way, isn’t an actor, but a real Tweeter employee).

“With Johnny, it’s much more personalized,” Curran says about Tweeter’s unofficial mascot. “People can ask Johnny technical questions about their products or installs. Being an installer, he answers those questions in a forum himself.” He continues, “It’s an important thing recognize what the audience wants. They want to know it’s going to be a personal relationship with the installer—this is their baby, this is their car. They don’t want to drive up to a big store and drop their car off and not get a one-on-one relationship.”

All-in-all, the site, which will be an ongoing live experience, and serves as an entertaining platform for those just dying to flaunt their wares—evoking social networking aspects in the process. “What we wanted to do was create a separate identity for them with Tweeter Mobile in the online space where you can build a community,” Curran adds. “It’s having a more direct relationship with that [younger] audience versus the more adult audience. There’s a user gallery where you can submit photographs of the install you’ve had done. That’s very popular with the audience, having 3-D images and specs of their car installs. It’s kind of an ego thing.”





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