At Sonos, I developed the strategic positioning for the publicly traded smart speaker giant to engage with a new audience, gamers.

For the better part of two decades, Sonos has inspired the world to listen better. With an initial focus exclusively on music, the brand engaged with the tastes and listening habits of its customers earnestly and thoughtfully to make meaningful cultural connections. Around three years ago, with the advent of voice assistants and the return of Audible, Sonos expanded its conception of audible media with the ‘sonic internet’ and began including references to podcasts and audiobooks in more brand communications. Recently, as Beam and Arc have modernized the home theater range, Sonos has worked to ensure their approach to TV and movies is as considered and representative of their audience as the myriad other media they listen to and reference. Now, starting this holiday season and building next year, Sonos will engage with another listening experience that not only looms large in the marketplace, but is already beloved by countless existing Sonos customers: Video Games. With the help of Ways & Means, we created internal documents and content to help teams at Sonos engage with this audience confidently and crafted the positioning to help authentically extend the already-established and consistent brand voice into this exciting new arena.

Because gaming is an increasingly endemic cultural medium, the brands that are going to best capture and keep that audience are the ones who can establish meaningful connections. Much like the challenge facing legacy sports brands attempting to enter the similarly large but elusive skateboarding market, gamers are a sophisticated and engaged audience accustomed to being half-heartedly targeted by multinationals that didn't do the work to learn about the depth of their favorite art form. Individuals often have a monolithic misconception of gamers, because of this we spent some time breaking down myths into truths.

Gamers are young males → Gamers are all of us

Video games are violent → Video games are art

Video games are computer games → The hardware matters

Gamers wear headsets → Console gamers listen out loud, often together

The thread that ties all gamers together is the notion that the video games are an artform. Sonos has done the work to establish bonafide cultural relevance in the music space. Now is the opportunity to expand this curatorial filter to an entirely new medium.

In our work, we go on to explain that it is pivotal for Sonos to position themselves as a brand that understands and values the immeasurable impact and importance of sound to the gaming experience. Similar to how Sonos deeply understands and engages with the listening habits of their audience, Sonos should strive to reference gaming touchpoints that feel as personal and authentic to the Sonos Gamer as the Sound System shows feel to Sonos Radio listeners. In addition to being a natural and authentic position for the brand — dovetailing particularly nicely with recent Sonos Radio and Sound System efforts — this may prove to be an ‘own-able’ space in the market: there is little precedent in the marketplace for either brands or media outlets prioritizing the value of sound to the gaming experience.