B&O PLAY

Creative Agency: Pearlfisher
Founding Creative Partner and Chief Executive Officer: Jonathan Ford
Strategic Creative Director: Jesper von Wieding
Managing Director: David Ramskov
Brand Strategist: Kristoffer Fink Parup
Design Director: Jon Vallance
Senior Designer: Lucy Roberts
Designer: Louise Hvenegaard
Packaging Content: Headphones, speakers
Location: New York, USA

Harmonising sound and vision for B&O PLAY.
Having launched just five years ago, B&O PLAY is the fast-growing challenger brand within the iconic Bang & Olufsen portfolio. Marrying the craftsmanship and quality of its parent brand with millennial lifestyle ideals, B&O PLAY aims to attract consumers at a younger age and deliver experiences designed around the beauty and portability of sound.

Always looking to express the magical interplay between music, design and the atmosphere in a room arrested by sound, B&O PLAY occupies a highly emotional brand position – even describing itself as being “in the business of goosebumps”. Despite this, the packaging design remained evocative of a highly functional category and was doing little to communicate the emotional resonance of the brand. As such, B&O PLAY turned to Pearlfisher to strengthen its desirability by better connecting customers with the authenticity and visceral quality of its brand truth.

To bring the idea of goosebumps to life at the customer’s first interaction with a product, Pearlfisher unpacked the experience of music: the feeling it gives you, where you listen to it, and the role it plays in the lifestyle you lead. B&O PLAY speaks to a generation of urban creatives for whom music is the ultimate form of self-expression; a universal language that takes us on a journey from connection, to emotion, to escape. If the purpose of B&O PLAY is to ‘Make Beautiful Music,’ Pearlfisher’s strategy defined the role of design as the creation of anticipation for beautiful music.

To help the consumer feel the music before pressing play – to go from looking at silence on a shelf of products to truly seeing the sound – Pearlfisher explored a design essence of ‘Awakening the Senses.’ Drawing inspiration from the rich, premium and tactile world of magazines and print – one that delivers aspirational and inspiring stories of place, space, aesthetics and emotion – Pearlfisher designed a concept that uses packaging to tell the stories of B&O PLAY’s headphones and speakers: their unique abilities, design features and the seamless way they fit into the consumers’ lifestyles. The editorial approach to design reflects one of B&O PLAY’s most valuable brand equities – it’s visually captivating, curated and lifestyle-driven blog, ‘The Journal’, which comes to life both online and as a premium printed magazine.

Jesper von Wieding, Strategic Creative Director in Pearlfisher’s Copenhagen studio, explains, “Our narrative-led approach to packaging gives the brand scope to reflect contemporary culture in a way that aligns with the lifestyles of its target market: an expressive generation that lives for experiences catered to the curious mind. For example, by periodically changing the packaging’s ‘subject matter’ in a manner evocative of a magazine, we can reflect both the transformative journey of music and the nomadic millennial lifestyle. By shooting the products in spaces that capture and compliment the product sentiment, we convey a desire to experience those moments.”

Matthias F. Ørum-Hansen, Head of Concept & Design at B&O PLAY, commented, “Pearlfisher’s strategic and design solution has opened up a whole new expressive space for our products. By bringing the youthful bravery and contemporary flair of B&O PLAY to the fore, the new packaging takes us into the next phase of our journey to become the leading audio lifestyle brand.”

The new packaging for B&O PLAY is being rolled out in stores, with SKU’s being updated on a product lifecycle basis.