LG today announced that it's relaunching its Xboom party speaker brand in collaboration with Black Eyed Pea Will.I.Am and I have some notes.
The first is quite simple: LG Xboom by Will.I.Am is too many syllables. Say it out loud. There are eight. It's not snappy or memorable. Beats by Dre is just three.
Secondly, if you're going to lift the Beats playbook, why Will.I.Am?
Google Trends suggests Will.I.Am's popularity peaked in April 2013, after which it had a sharp decline. Similarly, the Black Eyed Peas fell off the Google Trends map in December 2010, just before the band's hiatus in February the following year. Neither Will.I.Am or his band aren't exactly relevant right now. (The potential counterargument is Black Eyed Peas still have around 40 million listeners per month on Spotify, but Will.I.Am only has 10 million).
Will.I.Am is also potentially problematic for his pro-generative AI stance. While over 200 artists such as Billie Eilish and Katy Perry have signed an open letter that urged AI developers to stop using the tech to "infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists", Will.I.Am is a proponent of the tech.
Most notably, he an investor in Udio, an AI tool that can generate a song from a prompt. Udio has admitted it trained its AI using unlicensed music, and is currently being sued by several record labels for copyright infringement.
And like what does this line from the press release even mean?
"All 'Xboom by Will.I.Am' products will be integrated with Will.I.Am’s RAiDiO.FYI; an AI-powered interactive audio experience, to introduce a new generation of listeners to infotainment."
My brain left my body when I read that.
There are so many more interesting artists LG could have partnered with. If the brand is really committed to the too many syllables bit, why not Charli XCX? LG Xboom by Charli XCX is just as much of a mouthful, but is more fun to say.
Charli is one of the biggest artists of the moment, and you've got easy tie-ins. Releasing devices in Brat green is a no-brainer, and a 365 party girl is a perfect alignment for 365 party speakers.
Alternatively, there's Billie Eilish. She's the fourth most streamed artist on Spotify at the moment, and is no stranger to headphone deals having done work with Beats in the past. Xboom by Billie has a good ring to it.
K-pop is having a cultural moment, and LG has gone as far as commissioning original songs to from artists to promote flip phones back in the day. Xboom by Blackpink? Maybe a little niche, comparatively, but certainly more interesting.
My personal pick for LG's headphone ambassador would have been Health. While a mopey industrial band might be a weird partner for a party speaker, Health have been very open to collaborations (they've featured rappers, metal bands, and even hyperpop musicians in their tracks), and if their social media presence is anything to go by, it would at least be entertaining.
Celebrity partnerships are par for the course for marketing strategies, but LG's Will.I.Am play comes across as something you'd do a decade ago. 2024 is a bit late to get it started.
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Alex Choros
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