Jaguar Land Rover, in conjunction with media and marketing giant, Mindshare, have developed a new immersive adventure podcast series.
“A what what-what?” you might ask. In these podcasts, listeners experience stories from the perspective of a character in the story. In this case, a young person, Sam, in the company of several adults, who embark on a mysterious adventure together.
The adventure takes the participants, in a Land Rover Discovery of course, to a variety of famous locations across the UK, including the Natural History Museum, Cheddar Gorge, and Saint Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. A binaural microphone in the shape of a human head was used to record background sounds at the various locations, in the hope would in some way be able to add a layer of realism upon playback.
The stories themselves are peppered with celebrity voices including Sir Ranulph Fiennes, and BBC journalist Kate Silverton among others.
According to Land Rover, the Discovery serves as the “hero of the story” as the cast travel the land to solve a compelling mystery. Additionally, the company hopes that the Land Rover is portrayed as an “enabler of adventure,” and also as the “center of the family, the place where parents and children can enjoy the same media, mostly away from separate screens. A captive audience, and hopefully a captivated audience will get behind young Sam, his uncle, his dog, and the friends they pick up on their journey to get to the bottom of who is scrambling GPS signals across the UK.”
“With these type of audio experiences, Land Rover hopes to immerse listeners in its cars and beyond: “Our cars have fantastic sound but these podcasts bring our brand into other peoples’ cars. This provides a route for the brand to infiltrate other motor brands and really solidify Land Rover values.”
Mindshare’s UK creative director, Becky Power, explains further. She said, "The podcast is immersive and inspiring people to get out, the binaural sound adds another level of richness, it also has a very exciting story arc with the idea you can visit these places yourself.”
Binaural content is best enjoyed with headphones or in relatively confined spaces, like that of a car, so the sound reaches the listener in the desired way. To ensure the integrity of the audio, each scene was recorded in-car, on location to be as true to reality as possible with the human-head shaped microphone, like the one pictured above.
The series is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Acast.
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