How Bose’s marketing chief is cutting through the noise

It’s been a rough cou­ple of years for Bose Cor­po­ra­tion. After ven­tur­ing into wear­able tech­nol­o­gy and healthtech, the man­u­fac­tur­er of high-end audio equip­ment saw its sales rev­enue fall from a peak of $4bn (£3.5bn) in 2019 to $3.2bn in 2021. Over the same peri­od, its work­force shrank from 9,000 to 7,000.

The Mass­a­chu­setts-based firm has shut­tered its direct-to-con­sumer hear­ing-aid divi­sion, although its tech­nol­o­gy is being used by spe­cial­ist provider Lex­ie Hear­ing as part of a part­ner­ship announced in July. Sim­i­lar­ly, exper­i­ments with sleep aids and Bose Frames – a set of sun­glass­es with built-in speak­ers – have dis­tanced the busi­ness from its tra­di­tion­al cus­tomer base.

Jim Mol­li­ca, who became Bose’s first glob­al CMO when he joined from appar­el brand Under Armour in Jan­u­ary 2021, believes that this loss of focus on the firm’s core audi­ence has con­tributed to its dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance of late. 

“When you’re a com­pa­ny dri­ven by inno­va­tion, there’s no short­age of oppor­tu­ni­ties to wan­der into new spaces. Maybe we didn’t always have the strongest fil­ter on some of that inno­va­tion,” he admits.

In May this year, Bose stat­ed that it would be con­cen­trat­ing on “the prod­ucts and tech­nolo­gies that mat­ter most to our cus­tomers”. Its lat­est offer­ings cer­tain­ly sup­port that asser­tion. Take the Qui­et­Com­fort Ear­buds II, for instance. These are designed to auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust the sound per­for­mance “to your ears’ lik­ing” by using a sys­tem that uses the prin­ci­ples of echolo­ca­tion to deter­mine the exact shapes of each user’s ear canals.

“It’s our mis­sion to bring trans­for­ma­tion­al and immer­sive sound expe­ri­ences to peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate about music,” Mol­li­ca says. “From the start, it was clear to me that we should focus on music. There was no need to be dis­tract­ed by oth­er things.”

Re-connecting with core customers

In some ways, he is work­ing to win over his 15-year-old self. “At that age, the two things that were most impor­tant to me were bas­ket­ball and music,” he recalls.

The music that he was into dur­ing his teenage years wasn’t to his par­ents’ lik­ing, so he saved up for his own set of Bose Acousti­mass speak­ers that he could use in his bed­room, thus start­ing his “love affair” with the brand.

So, when Bose approached Mol­li­ca about the job, he answered the call with a “resound­ing ‘yes’. Hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a part of a brand that is so sto­ried was real­ly impor­tant to me.”

One of the first things he did in the new­ly cre­at­ed role was to exam­ine the company’s her­itage to see how he could “rein­force the idea that Bose doesn’t just treat music as an acces­so­ry”. 

Tech­ni­cal experts have often held senior roles at the com­pa­ny, which was found­ed in 1964 by Amar Bose, an elec­tri­cal engi­neer spe­cial­is­ing in acoustics. In 2011, two years before his death at 83, he hand­ed a con­trol­ling stake over to his alma mater, the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, on the pro­vi­so that the firm would remain pri­vate­ly owned to pro­tect its patents and prod­uct devel­op­ment.

“That love for music inno­va­tion has always been present,” Mol­li­ca says. “But there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reartic­u­late and sharp­en our mis­sion by con­sis­tent­ly bring­ing it to life through con­tent and expe­ri­ences across all of our brand touch­points.”

Bose’s work in this respect has includ­ed secur­ing singer-song­writer Tai Verdes, rap­per Kid Cudi and vir­tu­al band Goril­laz as brand ambas­sadors and part­ner­ing with DJ Heron Pre­ston for his New York Fash­ion Week show, which fea­tured a set from The Strokes.

Asso­ci­at­ing with such artists helps to give Bose’s cus­tomers “con­fi­dence in their pur­chas­es, as well as rein­forc­ing the fact that we make these prod­ucts specif­i­cal­ly for them”, accord­ing to Mol­li­ca. “Cel­e­brat­ing the com­mu­nal nature of music shows our cus­tomers that we val­ue the same things as they do. It’s a real­ly impor­tant part of our strat­e­gy to demon­strate this.”

Building brand association

This mes­sag­ing extends to audio expe­ri­ences oth­er than music. A part­ner­ship with HBO, for instance, saw Bose’s sound sys­tem fea­ture promi­nent­ly dur­ing the TV network’s pro­mo­tions for the Game of Thrones spin-off House of Drag­ons at the San Diego Com­ic-Con event in July. 

There are also plans to intro­duce a “sound concierge” ser­vice that helps peo­ple to fine-tune their audio equip­ment to match their needs, whether they’re lis­ten­ing to music, watch­ing movies or play­ing video games. 

“This gives us an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to cater to these dif­fer­ent lis­ten­ing occa­sions,” Mol­li­ca explains. “Cre­at­ing con­tent-rich expe­ri­ences and build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty around sound improve the brand’s authen­tic­i­ty.”

The company’s change of empha­sis has been made eas­i­er by the fact that all of its employ­ees have “ded­i­cat­ed their lives to sound”, he adds. “We need to get close to the con­sumer as a brand, so it real­ly helps that we have so many audio­philes and musi­cians in the busi­ness.”

He com­pares Bose’s recent mar­ket­ing efforts to that of drinks brand Red Bull, which has tak­en an unortho­dox approach to build­ing aware­ness through its asso­ci­a­tions with foot­ball, motor rac­ing and extreme sports such as air rac­ing and cliff div­ing. 

“Red Bull has done an incred­i­ble job of asso­ci­at­ing the brand with cer­tain cul­tur­al moments,” Mol­li­ca says. “At Bose, we want a pres­ence in any place where music mat­ters. We want peo­ple to know we don’t just talk about music; we’re embed­ded in it. Music is endem­ic to who we are and what we do.”

With plans to pro­duce mar­ket­ing con­tent to coin­cide with the Gram­my Awards in ear­ly 2023, Bose is clear­ly a believ­er in the pow­er of asso­ci­a­tion to set the record straight about its pri­or­i­ties as a brand and re-engage the enthu­si­as­tic fol­low­ing it had worked so dili­gent­ly to earn in the first place.