Sunday, November 16, 2008
Bluetooth
Is it just me or is it hard to take people seriously when they're wearing Bluetooth headsets and talking to you? I was out at a Wendy's and saw this guy complaining to the clerk rather angrily and was on the verge of laughing. For some reason the fact that he had the Bluetooth on seemed really comical.
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Jawbone Viral Videos Attack Perception of Headset Users
Feb 4, 2008
By Mike Beirne
To combat what one ad exec so colorfully called the “douchebag factor” associated with wearing mobile headsets, Jawbone has released an ultraviolent set of viral films targeting the YouTube crowd.
Four online shorts, created by Anomaly, New York, were posted last week on jawbonefilms.com. Each begins with loud, obnoxious characters. Because of Jawbone’s “Noise Shield” technology, the people wearing the headsets miss all of the commotion.
In the ads, a racist dry cleaner patron is bludgeoned to death by a cash register and three frat guys are mauled by a shark in a hotel pool. The spots, directed by Sam Bayer, finish with the tagline, “Jawbone eliminates noise.”
“We’re trying to draw awareness and change people’s perception of a category,” said Elizabeth Bastiaanse, vp-marketing at Aliph, San Francisco, which manufactures Jawbone. “We wanted to do something that was different than what we usually see in this category.”
Iain Gillott, president of iGR, a mobile communications consultant in Austin, Texas, said because of the appearance of Bluetooth headsets many consumers, including himself, “detest the things. If they look really big and clunky, then people look stupid and they won’t buy them.”
Aliph created the spots to show off its fashionable headset, designed by Yves Behar, and the benefits of military grade technology that shuts out background noise without getting bogged down in techno jargon.
At $119, Jawbone is priced at the top end of a category; some headsets cost less than $50. But, Bastiaanse said, consumers are willing to pay for superior function and design. This strategy could be a problem considering Gillott said price is the first factor consumers consider when making a headset purchase, followed by aesthetics and then sound quality.
Jawbonefilms.com is Aliph's largest viral outreach since launching a product demo video on YouTube in 2006 and cultivating product reviews on blogs and techie sites.
mbeirne@brandweek.com
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