Audible.com : Understanding the Sublime

With 26,000 audio titles available for download from its website and millions of compatible MP3 players in public use, Audible.com has a powerful value proposition for affluent professionals with little time for reading. In particular, one of its key benefits making entertainment or intellectual stimulation possible during long stretches of boring or painful activity such as commuting to work or exercising.

Polar Design met Audible to review its marketing department’s experiences in pitching its service. Audible learned that consumers had a difficult time understanding the basic nature of its service - "audio titles available in a digital format through the Internet" was a fairly abstract concept to grasp for average buyers of books on tape. This challenge, in addition to the task of presenting the emotional value of the Audible experience over the Internet both represented a significant challenge for Polar Design and Flash technology generally.

Beginning with internal brainstorming and regular discussions of storyboard concepts with Audible's senior management, Polar Design's project consultants gradually refined the images needed to portray Audible's emotional effect on commuters. At the same time, Polar Design's lead designers and Flash programmers played an integral part of storyboard development, offering guidance as to technical limitations of various concepts thus permitting the project consultants to rapidly find the best solution to convey the image, limit file size, development time and cost to Audible.

The final result is a presentation combining a dynamic, engaging intro sequence with an informative presentation outlining everything from the types of devices that work with the Audible service to step-by-step instructions in using the web site and Audible software.

The Audible.com presentation is temporarily hosted at: http://www.polardesign.com/audible/audible_overview.html.

Back to the Case Studies.