JBL has restructured its marketing approach from focusing on campaigns to centering the brand around culture where music, creators and audiences intersect in real life.
For Chris Epple, vice president of marketing, Americas at Harman, that shift is not theoretical. It informs how the company allocates budget, selects partners, and measures success.
“We try to show up where culture is actually happening,” Epple during a fireside chat at Brand Innovators’ SXSW event. “Not create something separate and ask people to come to us.”
JBL’s marketing is anchored in live environments – festivals, campuses, retail spaces – rather than relying primarily on traditional media.
The brand’s long-running presence at SXSW illustrates the approach. Instead of a single activation, JBL builds a network of experiences: live performances, creator collaborations, product trials and panel discussions. The objective is to embed the brand within the audience’s experience of music and discovery.
At SXSW, JBL positioned itself as infrastructure rather than sponsor – providing sound for performances, hosting emerging artists and facilitating interactions between creators and fans.
This model reflects a broader shift inside the company. Marketing is not treated as messaging layered on top of the product. It is integrated into how and where the product is experienced.
“We don’t think about marketing as something separate from the product experience,” said Epple. “It has to be part of how people actually interact with the brand in the real world.”
JBL has also moved away from traditional endorsement models toward a distributed network of creators. Its JBL Campus program recruits college athletes, DJs, and student creators who produce content across platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Rather than scripting messaging, the brand allows participants to interpret JBL through their own interests – music, fashion or campus life.
“It’s music, it’s lifestyle, it’s fashion, it’s dorm hacks,” Epple said.
The strategy prioritizes scale and diversity over star power. JBL signs athletes across multiple sports and backgrounds with a deliberate emphasis on representation. More than half of participants are women, reflecting the demographics of college campuses.
The output is measurable. Within months of launch, JBL Campus generated tens of millions of impressions and engagement rates significantly above industry benchmarks.
JBL’s physical retail strategy follows the same logic: treat every environment as a branded experience rather than a point of sale.
The company’s flagship store in New York is designed to maximize dwell time and interaction. According to Epple, visitors spend an average of seven minutes in-store – long enough to engage with multiple product demonstrations.
“It’s basically having a billboard 365 days a year,” he said.
The store functions as a continuous marketing channel, combining product trial, content creation, and brand storytelling in a single environment. The goal is not immediate conversion, but repeated exposure and familiarity.
Across these initiatives, JBL measures success over a longer horizon than typical campaign metrics.
College marketing is framed as an entry point into a multi-stage relationship. A student who encounters JBL through campus activations may later purchase headphones, encounter the brand in a car audio system, or introduce it to their household.
“With college marketing, you’re creating a lifetime of value,” Epple said.
This lifecycle view influences how the brand invests. Rather than optimizing for short-term conversion, JBL prioritizes environments and partnerships that can scale across years and product categories.
Underlying JBL’s approach is a consistent principle: marketing, product, and cultural relevance must operate as a single system.
The brand focuses on environments where music is central – live events, creator ecosystems, and social platforms – and ensures its products are present in those moments. Campaigns are built out of those interactions, not the other way around. “We’re trying to balance physical and digital in a way that reflects how people actually experience music,” Epple said.
In practice, that means fewer standalone campaigns and more integrated platforms – campus programs, festival activations, and retail experiences – that continuously generate content and engagement.
JBL’s strategy reflects a broader shift in how brands operate in culture. Instead of broadcasting messages, the company builds systems that allow people—artists, students, creators—to participate.
The result is marketing that scales through use, not just exposure.
And in Epple’s framing, that is the point: remove abstraction, focus on execution and ensure the brand shows up where people are already engaged.
“No buzzwords,” he said. “Just making sure what we do actually works.”
