Sennheiser, a leading manufacturer of headphones and microphones for the pro can consumer audio market, recently launched the Inspired by DJs: Day and Nite Portrait Series to promote its new Amperior headphones. Based on the popular HD 25 DJ headphone, Sennheiser says the the Amperior, with its brushed aluminum finish, is geared for both the street and the DJ booth.
The campaigns home destination is its Inspired by DJs website, which hosts video interviews with DJs from around the world, including legendary turntablists, Q-Bert (USA) and DJ Fly (France), as well and British house music producer, Bob Sinclair, and Detroit’s iconic techno artist, Richie Hawin. The videos are also available on the Sennheiser’s official YouTube channel.
“The Day & Night interviews explore the source of their creativity, asks if inspiration strikes by day or night, and looks at who the world’s greatest DJs see as their own mentors and sources of inspiration. We wanted to show the personalities and also the work, commitment and passion that has made them the best in the world,” said Katrin Huss at Sennheiser Consumer Electronics.
To drive interest to the campaign, Sennheiser and Bob Sinclair teamed up for a One Day & One Night in London contest. Entrants submit photos, video and stories about their favorite nightclub experiences on the Sennheiser Facebook page. 5 winners will be chosen for an all-expendes paid trip to London for a night with Bob Sinclair. 50 runner-up winners will receive a special edition box set of HD 25 DJ headphones and Amperior headphones to take their sounds on the road.
As far as social music campaigns go, this one is very basic in concept and execution. Sennheiser closes the loop by driving interest to its destination web site, then points entrants to the company’s Facebook page to enter the contest. We thought it fell short in a couple of areas:
1. Content Syncronization – The Sennheiser YouTube Channel features videos that have yet to make it over to the destination website. In fact, Qbert’s video lives on YouTube, but is curiously not yet embedded on its respective page on the website.
2. Poor SEO – The Inspired By DJ site has a fixed layout. Clicking on any DJ in the left sidebar loads content in the right content pane. While this has a bit of a cool factor, so that the page doesn’t reload, the site loses a bit of SEO juice by limiting the opportunity for Google to link a page URL with keywords to a page with a corresponding H1 tag.
In the code samples from the site below, we see that the meta tags contain no reference to the DJs and DJ Fly’s div block contains an H1 style, but the URL bar remains fixed on the overall page URL: www.sennheiser-sites.com/inspired-by-djs/#.
<head><script type="text/javascript">var NREUMQ=NREUMQ||[];NREUMQ.push(["mark","firstbyte",new Date().getTime()]);</script> <title>Sennheiser - Headphones & Headsets - Microphones - Integrated Systems</title> <meta charset='utf-8'> <meta content='Sennheiser - Headphones & Headsets - Microphones - Integrated Systems - Service & Support - Discover True Sound - Top-quality products and tailor made solutions for every aspect of recording, transmission, and reproduction of sound. ' name='description'> <meta content='Headphones,Headsets,Microphones,Integrated Systems,bluetooth headphones,ANC,ANRPilot headset,studio headsets,audiology,RF wireless,sennheiser.com' name='keywords'>
<span id="the_content2" style="display:none;"> <div style="color: #FFFFFF; padding:10px; height:586px; background: url(DJFly_bg.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;"> <h1 style="color: #FFFFFF;"> DJ FLY <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">(<a href="http://www.myspace.com/djflycom" target="_blank">www.myspace.com/djflycom</a>)</span> </h1> <p> Exploding out of Lyon as part of the Scratch Bandits Crew, super star turntablist, scratch virtuoso and producer DJ FLY has taken the global DJ scene by storm over the past decade. As well as breathing in the rarified air at the top of the DJ world – winner of regional and national DMC titles and of the DMC World Championship in 2008 -, DJ FLY is a legendary performer – wowing crowds with energy and personality. <br> <div align="center"> <iframe width="356" height="200" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WN38V270QWg?rel=0&autoplay=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <br> Influenced primarily by Hip Hop, with an affinity for Soul, Rock, Electro and Dubstep, DJ FLY’s original sets smoothly integrate tracks from artists such as “Busta Rhymes” to “Chase And Status”. <br> <br> His talents have taken him beyond the borders of his hometown: DJ FLY soon conquered France and destinations abroad as he met with the same success on tour. He has performed solo and alongside artists such as Method Man, RedMan, Raekwon, Nas and Akon as well as with other renowned DJs such as DJ QBert, Grand Master Flash and A-Trak. </p> </div> </span>
3. No Social Sharing Buttons – The Inspired By DJ site lacks any social sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest, even though the main Sennheiser site contains those features in the left sidebar, as shown below.
In addition, the main site has yet to implement Facebook Open Graph Objects tags for articles in the site
<head></head>
element, which cause’s its sharing tools to display the site’s H1 and not the H1 of the story itself. When delivering content into social media, it ‘s important to get the right content into a page, so that when it gets shared across the social web, the context remains constant.
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<title>Sennheiser: Headphones, Microphones and Wireless Systems</title>
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<meta content='Headphones, Headsets, Microphones and Wireless Systems - Sennheiser Discover True Sound - www.sennheiser.com' name='description'>
<link href="/assets/application-dc3ffb692385bf88b0f61915192657f0.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
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<link href="/assets/browsers/ie8-c8e024da5b07b220181401405c63a13a.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
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<script>
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_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-29729271-1']);
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'sennheiser.com']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
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var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'http://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
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</head>In the screenshot below, we can see that the content for the share is incorrect. Facebook is pulling the title of the main page and not the title of the news item. Implementing Open Graph tags for Ojbects would help scrape the page and ensure the correct content is shared into a Facebook wall post. Notice that only the photo and a portion of the URL of the page is correct: http://en-de.sennheiser.com/news/the-word-on-the-streets-what-are-the-hottest-clubs-around-the-word-tell-sennheiser-your-tips-to-win-one-day-one-night-in-london-with-bob-sinclar; the title and description are not.
4. Confusing “Call To Action” – We’re not sure what the call to action is here. There is text above the Bob Sinclair video embed that says: “Call To Action,” but does not click through to anything. Most web users have never heard the phrase, “call to action,” which is an insider’s term for inserting content that will drive a user to take an action, for example, visit a web page, enter a content or buy a product.
While the video of Bob Sinclair is embedded in the center of the page, there is no mention of the contest until you scroll below the fold to the Latest News section, which provides links to content announcements in the form of news; very uninspiring!. There is no continuity here. What’s missing? Maybe graphics around the video that promote the contest. Simple to do and simple to execute, but it seems as if there was no interest in getting creative. We guess there was some “compromise,” despite the “without compromise” line under the “Inspired by DJs” header.
Launching the contest without wrapping the DJ in contest imagery or mentioning the contest above the fold – well, we can see where that is a #FAIL.
5. Where’s Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram as part of the contest? – Why only Facebook? Companies need to understand that in order to leverage the social web, you need to attack all the channels, not just one.
6. Poor Image tagging – We noticed that on the Inspired by DJwebsite, all of the home page DJ images are not using the “alt” or “description” elements in their respective image tags. While each image uses the DJs name in the file name, i.e. “square_homepage_tile_size_2_Bob-Sinclar_SW.jpg,” the image tags should also contain more descriptive information for Google to pick them up and rank them higher in an image search.
<div class='js_tile tile-position-2 tile-size-2'>
<a href='' onclick='document.getElementById("the_content0").innerHTML = document.getElementById("the_content1").innerHTML;return false;'>
<img alt='' class='js_imagetoggler' data-src-mouseout='square_homepage_tile_size_2_Bob-Sinclar_SW.jpg' data-src-mouseover='square_homepage_tile_size_2_Bob-Sinclar.jpg' src='square_homepage_tile_size_2_Bob-Sinclar_SW.jpg' />
<div class='info'>
<span class='link'>
DJ Bob Sinclar
</span>
<span class='debug'>
tile-position: 2
</span>
</div>
</a>
</div>
<div class='js_tile tile-position-2 tile-size-2'>
<a href='' onclick='document.getElementById("the_content0").innerHTML = document.getElementById("the_content2").innerHTML;return false;'>
<img alt='' class='js_imagetoggler' data-src-mouseout='square_DJFly_SW.jpg' data-src-mouseover='square_DJFly.jpg' src='square_DJFly_SW.jpg' />
<div class='info'>
<span class='link'>
DJ FLY
</span>
<span class='debug'>
tile-position: 2
</span>
</div>
</a>
</div>While they’ve put a good amount of thought into this campaign, Sennheiser could have taken it one step further and really made a strong, creative impact. Hopefully, other companies will learn from where Sennheiser fell short. Regardless, Netmix hopes the Sennheiser campaign is successful. And, if you feel so inclined, maybe you’ll pick up a pair of Sennheiser Amperior headphones from Amazon through Netmix.
(Disclosure: We get an affiliate commission if you buy through Netmix and can use the extra pennies!)
A nice analysis of the campaign – thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Just one note – Bob Sinclar is French 😉
Lee.
Ah, thanks. I will correct that!
Those poor Germans: such brilliant audio engineers but perhaps not the best at hiring marketing agencies for their products. <a href = "http://classicalmusicheadphones.com/sennheiser-hd-598-headphones-review/">The HD598's are some of the best headphones you could ever buy, but most people don't know about them and buy Beats instead.
fantastic analysis!
Anthony I have to say I agree with Matt, so many great products have come from Sennheiser but it seems like Beats are the market leader purely because of the branding, I have heard many complains about the quality of the audio not being as good as other models, I can see from your site analysis that it's obvious most of these guys don't know much about marketing.