Sonos: advert-body-1 by Anomaly

Sonos is having a little fun with the smart speaker craze in its latest campaign.

The brand’s tongue-in-cheek ads aim to convince users that its Sonos One smart speaker is the best bet for music fans, even though it might not have all the bells and whistles that some of its competitors do.

One ad is a direct dig at Apple’s HomePod smart speaker, which was released earlier this year. While the HomePod has been praised for its quality sound and design, a recurring criticism is that it only accepts voice commands for Apple Music — a limitation that Sonos hasn’t been afraid to exploit. When the HomePod came out in February, Sonos ran a print ad in the New York Times to remind consumers that it supports music services including Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal, Apple Music, SoundCloud and Google Play Music.

Sonos is once again drawing attention to this in one of its latest ads, which sees two men checking out a smart speaker called ‘Serge’ that glows and has levitating capabilities. Initially wooed by its futuristic design, the two become quickly irritated when they realize it can’t play Spotify or Pandora playlists.

Another spot features a woman named Cheryl who asks her smart speaker to play her wake-up playlist. Upon asking, her home suddenly becomes overrun by smart speakers who bombard her with weather updates, meeting reminders and calls to her mother-in-law. Peace is only restored when she asks her Sonos to play Leon Bridges, which it does.