“We’re Excited To Take The Nura Brand To Places Around The Globe”

New Zealand Rugby recently signed a partnership which will sees audio brand Nura become the Official Headphones of the All Blacks. To find our more, iSPORTCONNECT spoke with Daniel McCallum, Chief Marketing Officer of Nura, about the deal and the company’s ambitions.

Why was this partnership with the New Zealand All Blacks of interest to you ?

The All Blacks have been described as the most successful sports team on the planet, their winning record is unrivalled. That they come from a small nation like New Zealand is a testament to a relentless pursuit of perfection combined with bucket-loads of passion. We are a young company on a mission to revolutionize how humanity experiences music. That means the All Blacks are a huge source of inspiration for us as we look to disrupt an industry dominated by global giants.

Beyond this, music has always been a key ingredient in the All Blacks’ preparation, on and off the field. Before this partnership came about, the players used our products and told us they loved them.  Now, Nura’s personalized sound gets the team even closer to the music that focuses, energizes and moves them, and we couldn’t be prouder.

We’re excited to take the Nura brand to places around the globe, so more people can discover and enjoy what personalized sound can be.

But the partnership doesn’t stop with the All Blacks. This is a three-year global partnership and Nura will also be the Official Headphones of the Black Ferns, All Blacks Sevens, Black Ferns Sevens, Maori All Blacks and All Blacks XV sides.

What is the role that sports sponsorship plays within your marketing and how big do you think the relationship between sport and music is?

Nura is, and always will be, a music company. Partnerships with artists and creators across the spectrum of music continue to be our core focus. We’ve also recognized that both music and sport are universal languages. Fans around the world are used to seeing their sports heroes enjoying music to warm up and warm down, to celebrate and recover. We believe that in music, hearing is feeling. So when you hear more, you can feel more and you can go further.

So by combining with a global sports team like the All Blacks, now Nura can bring the best sound in the world to rugby fans all around the world. We’re excited to take the Nura brand to places around the globe, around and inside the ears of New Zealand Rugby teams, so more people can discover and enjoy what personalized sound – and our totally unique hearing technology – can be, whatever their context.

While sponsorship sits at the top of the funnel, driving awareness and recognition across a very wide base of consumers, it’s our ability to activate the sponsorship through in-stadium and digital marketing that coverts that into interest and, hopefully, more people enjoying listening to Nura out in the wild.

Tell us about how your gaming products produce the best experience for players?

The gap between sports and gaming is becoming almost indistinguishable, so it’s no surprise that we recently launched a product for the professional and lifestyle gamer – the Nuraphone Gaming Microphone..

Not everyone realizes just how different our hearing is from those around us – or even between each of our own ears! The Nuraphone measures your hearing, automatically, in about a minute. It does this by sending sound waves into the inner ear and measuring the very faint echo it sends back – something known as Otoacoustic Emission. Based on that, we know where your personal hearing sensitivities lie so we can tune the sound to you. When you hear music with Nura, you hear music in full colour.

In our partnership with New Zealand Rugby, they took an investor equity stake in Nura, which is a great way to align interests and ambition.

We recently combined the Nuraphone with the Nuraphone Gaming Microphone so that gamers can get a competitive edge through even sharper focus inside the game. We’ve been lucky to spend time with pro gamers around the world and they told us it’s like gaining an extra sense, hearing things they’ve never heard before inside games they know better than anyone.

The great news is, we released the Nuraphone Gaming Microphone just as as some of the major gaming platforms are releasing their next generation consoles, so this is the perfect way to complete the gaming experience at home.

Are you interested in the potential of esports sponsorship?

Yes, though as a startup, we are really looking for a partnership rather than traditional sponsorships. In our partnership with New Zealand Rugby, they took an investor equity stake in Nura, which is a great way to align interests and ambition. We are in discussion with some major esports franchises right now because we truly believe that our technology delivers a clear competitive advantage to players and teams alike.

How are you looking to evolve and expand the Nura brand?

The Nura brand is synonomous with personalized sound. We think we’ve kickstarted an audio revolution that will, eventually, be an expectation. Heading into 2021 with a broadening product portfolio, we know we need to reach a much wider audience and meet them where they are. The category itself is rapidly evolving with the ubiquity of wireless earphones and every week, new products hit the market across a very wide price-range.

It’s a matter of ensuring enough people know about us and get the chance to try our products at a time when there are a lot of large and established brands with much larger budgets.

What we won’t be changing is our focus on delivering the best quality sound in the world, tuned to the unique hearing profile of the user. That can’t be matched by anyone, so it’s a matter of ensuring enough people know about us and get the chance to try our products at a time when there are a lot of large and established brands with much larger budgets and ecosystems of products. We’re currently looking at evolving the way we express our brand across all of the customer touchpoints – online and offline – to grow the recognition of Nura as the leading audio brand in our category. Partnerships with artists, gamers, sports stars certainly help amplify that.

Tell us about your latest campaigns…

The last quarter of the year is always jam-packed with releases and campaigns, and this year is no different. We recently launched the Nuraphone Gaming Microphone that combines our unparalleled personalized sound with a gaming mic so pro gamers and lifestyle gamers and get an edge on their competition. We’ve just refreshed NuraNow, our subscription service for the Nuraphone from as low as $12USD a month plus a small upfront fee, no contracts.

We’re launching a limited edition variant of one of our favorite products later in November that’s truly one-of-a-kind. And as you would expect, the onset of the Holiday season means Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday specials that we know our community always keeps an eye on this time of year. Into 2021, expect us to continue to grow the portfolio so there are even more ways to enjoy Nura’s personalized sound.