Person with short bleached curly hair wearing gold i.am+ Buttons earphones, in profile against a warm amber backdrop
Submitted by New MoonAgency IPI Score 25/100

i.am+ Buttons Headphones Influencer Launch

Influencer Marketing

New Moon built the global brand strategy for i.am+ Buttons, the will.i.am wireless headphones, including a micro-influencer UGC campaign the agency reports reached a total of 227M.

227MUGC Total Reach

Case in 60 seconds

New Moon frames the challenge as breaking through a crowded wearables market with a cultural icon, because i.am+ was launching Buttons, the wireless headphones of will.i.am, into a category already full of competing products.

The launch turns on fashion and luxury rather than consumer electronics, because placing Buttons as an object of style gave figures from fashion a reason to hold a stake in the product rather than simply lend it their faces.

New Moon built a global brand strategy with will.i.am, running from positioning workshops to go-to-market strategies and global playbooks, which placed Buttons where the worlds of fashion and luxury merge rather than inside the wearables category.

During the launch month New Moon produced influencer dinners in New York, Miami, Berlin, London and Paris, recruiting micro-influencers who drove a UGC campaign, while Naomi Campbell, Kendall Jenner and Andre Leon Talley joined as equity partners. Bespoke packaging carried influencer seeding at Coachella, Summit at Sea, the GQ Men of the Year Awards in Berlin and the Collette Launch Party in Paris with Karl Lagerfeld.

New Moon reports that the micro-influencer UGC campaign reached a total of 227M, and that its campaign helped secure Apple as a global distribution partner, with Buttons sold in every Apple store worldwide and through Apple.com.

Strategy Breakdown

The page describes the wearables market as crowded, so a new pair of wireless headphones needed a route to attention that did not depend on competing with other products on their own terms.
New Moon positioned Buttons as part of a strategy merging the worlds of fashion and luxury, which made will.i.am and his equity partners the reason to notice the headphones rather than the hardware alone.

Creative & Execution System

Partners

  • New Moon

Creator role

  • Naomi Campbell
  • Kendall Jenner
  • Andre Leon Talley

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
UGC Total Reach227M total reach

Why New Moon's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Bringing Naomi Campbell, Kendall Jenner and Andre Leon Talley in as equity partners rather than ambassadors gives talent an ownership stake in the product, which turns a paid association into a shared commercial interest.

  2. 2

    Hosting influencer dinners city by city during the launch month lets a brand recruit its micro-influencer network in person, so the UGC that follows starts from a relationship rather than from a brief sent at a distance.

  3. 3

    Seeding bespoke packaging at events such as Coachella and the GQ Men of the Year Awards puts the headphones in rooms already gathered around fashion and culture, so the packaging itself becomes part of how the product is shown.

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