Nike and Spotify Empowering Runs

As a leader in the sportswear industry, Nike is synonymous with movement, strength, and innovation. To expand its connection with the audience beyond sports, the brand invested in music to maintain a closer and omnipresent relationship with its fans.

Nike+ Running is an application that integrates Spotify’s music library into the iPhone and Apple Watch, while tracking and calibrating notifications, location, pace, and elevation throughout the running route.

In recent years, this initiative expanded with the creation of Nike Run Club, a community where customers come together through music. According to the description on their official website, the idea is to “motivate the audience to exercise” with the brand.

On Spotify, the profile featuring exclusive playlists for runners, athletes, and international artists sharing their running music preferences, along with Nike’s own curated playlists in other genres, has amassed over 1.2 million followers.

The Music Academy by Martin Garrix and JBL

Last year, JBL announced the young Dutch DJ and producer Martin Garrix as its global ambassador. For JBL, a brand already associated with music and sound, this partnership aimed to expand its connection with the audience to reach what Ralph Santana, Director of Marketing, called “the highest levels of joy in life.”

“I’m always surrounded by music, so collaborating with them creatively is an opportunity I couldn’t refuse,” said Martin Garrix, affirming that the audio brand has been his “favorite for some time.”

For a company that values the sound reproduction quality of its products, portable speakers, and headphones, the partnership with Martin Garrix ensures that the brand becomes associated with the festivals and music the producer performs and releases. They also joined forces for a Music Academy, a mentoring project for new talents in electronic music worldwide—all trained with JBL equipment.

This initiative not only enhances JBL’s credibility by associating it with one of the world’s most famous DJs and producers but also demonstrates a type of engagement that establishes a connection with music-loving audiences. By hiring a new ambassador, nurturing promising talents, and participating in major music festivals worldwide, the brand expands its connections and opportunities to showcase itself to the world.

“This platform truly resonates with our values and allows us to reach new areas of music,” said Laura McCarthy, the brand manager, adding that the goal is to expand the company’s impact to “new fans and new genres“.

Jack Daniels is so closely associated with music that they invested heavily in another groundbreaking Music Branding initiative, evoking flavor through sound. With the support of Professor Charles Spence from the University of Oxford, the brand created an unprecedented track capable of “accentuating the bold tones of traditional whiskey,” considering the academic’s research on the interaction between different senses.

“Music contributes greatly to the shopping experience. That’s why I was dissatisfied with the random music we had in our stores before, lacking a connection with our brand. When we opted for brand-aligned curation by Zanna Sound, customers reacted very positively. We are already seeing the results,” said Bernardo Ouro Preto, co-founder of St Marche.

We took into account the profile of each region and maintained its musical personality. Initially, our Music Branding project covered 320 Vivo-owned stores throughout Brazil, and it is now part of the portfolio for all franchises.

In addition to the musical curation, we considered the sonic experience of the stores according to their architecture and the flow of people in the spaces. This ensured that the music is present in product experimentation areas and not in customer service areas where interactions and conversations take place.