To celebrate 80 years of pioneering excellence in audio, Sennheiser set out to do more than mark a milestone. They wanted to reignite passion for premium sound among a new generation of listeners. Habitat M built a media strategy designed to honour the brand’s legacy, showcase its innovation, and strengthen its category leadership. The result? Highest-ever share of voice, powerful engagement, and renewed brand energy across every key channel.
The Challenge
Sennheiser, a premium global audio brand, needed a comprehensive 2025 media strategy to elevate awareness, strengthen emotional connection, and reinforce its challenger position while simultaneously driving measurable retail demand in Australia. The task was to run an efficient acquisition program with sufficient broad-reach visibility to prime the market and capture category buyers during critical, high-stakes selling periods.
Our Approach
Applying Habitat M’s principles for brand growth, our strategy focused on building both mental availability and market presence through precision and consistency.
Smart frequency: We targeted headphone users and audio enthusiasts with efficient reach and repetition, ensuring Sennheiser remained top of mind.
Omni-channel integration: Multiple contextual touchpoints worked together to strengthen message recall and drive consideration.
Strategic intelligence: Using real-world behavioural data, we aligned creative and media placement to moments where the category was most active — ensuring relevance and resonance in every impression.
Our Strategic Approach
Our strategic approach for Sennheiser is to drive long-term brand growth by increasing awareness, recall, and mental availability across the broader headphone-buying category, rather than focusing solely on short-term conversion. The media strategy positions Sennheiser as a premium personal audio brand by using broad-reaching, multi-channel media, supported by contextual placements tied to real headphone usage occasions such as commuting, fitness, gaming, work, travel and entertainment. Performance and retail activity already support lower-funnel outcomes, so Habitat M’s role is to strengthen the upper brand layer, drive demand, and build warmer audiences that can improve future direct-response efficiency.
True to the principles of brand growth, we built an omni-channel ecosystem that reached audiences wherever they were listening, watching, and engaging.
Through advanced behavioural targeting tools, we connected real human signals with key media environments including YouTube, BVOD, Display, Spotify, and Premium Video, to deliver Sennheiser’s message with impact and frequency.
This cross-channel integration not only maximised scale but also drove meaningful engagement and website traffic, reinforcing Sennheiser’s leadership in premium sound experiences.
The Planning Principles
Our planning principles are grounded in how brands grow: by reaching the broadest possible pool of category buyers, building mental availability over time, and using media channels that work together to maximise incremental reach and impact. For Sennheiser, this means prioritising broad category reach over narrow audience targeting, with People 25+ as the core audience, and using contextual overlays to connect with relevant headphone-usage moments. Frequency is planned by channel and brand objective, ensuring repeated exposure is sufficient to build and refresh memory structures without compromising reach. Continuity is also critical, with the campaign designed to stay in market for as many active weeks as possible so Sennheiser remains visible when consumers move into buying mode. Finally, the media mix operates as an ecosystem, using complementary channels to create a multiplier effect, with performance and traditional channels working in tandem.
"What sets Habitat M apart is their ability to combine bold strategic thinking, proven brand-building principles and world-class media execution to deliver measurable business outcomes. Their strategic thinking, media expertise and commitment to excellence helped Sennheiser bring the brand to life, strengthen its leadership position in sound and create media activations that genuinely resonated with audiences. During the campaign period, our flagship product launch achieved the No. 1 position globally and contributed to over 30% of Sennheiser's 80th Edition sales. The campaign also delivered +74.9% YoY category growth in Q3 and secured the No. 1 Share of Voice ranking in five of the six campaign months. Sam and David challenge conventional thinking, build mental availability and deliver campaigns that create clear commercial impact, making Habitat M a strategic media partner I would recommend without hesitation."
Olivia, Head of Marketing APAC - Sonova Consumer Hearing
The Results
The strategy delivered over a 127% uplift in direct sales by campaign end. The brand achieved record growth during key retail periods, including Father’s Day, Black Friday, and Christmas/Boxing Day. Sennheiser secured a share-of-voice win against the category in four out of five months (with a net increase of 300%). This gave us a better understanding of funnel strategy effectiveness and helped shape further activation across channels.
