TicPods Free launch campaign for Mobvoi

Mobvoi · 2018

TicPods Free

Selling control in a category that only sells sound.

TicPods Free

The launch campaign for Mobvoi's first wireless earbuds — built to make interaction the hero, and to carry a crowdfunding launch from zero to $2.8M.

Creative Direction Art Direction Campaign Photography Launch Strategy
ClientMobvoi
RoleCreative Director · Art Director
ScopePhotography, Launch Video, Content Strategy
PlatformIndiegogo →
Year2018

$2.8M

Raised across the 90-day crowdfunding campaign

4 hrs

To hit the full funding goal after launch

1st

Wireless earbuds in the Mobvoi product line

End to End

Creative ownership — research, photo, video, page

Every earbud campaign sells sound. This one had to sell something you couldn't hear — the feeling of control.

The Brief

Launch a first-of-its-kind product — on a platform with no second chances.

TicPods Free was Mobvoi's first entry into wireless earbuds — a crowded, competitive category dominated by a single famous product. The launch would happen on Indiegogo, where the first hours decide everything: a campaign either builds momentum fast or it stalls in public.

I led creative direction and art direction across the entire campaign — the focus-group research that shaped the positioning, the campaign photography, the launch film, and the structure of the Indiegogo story page itself. One creative system, carrying a product launch from first impression to funded.

TicPods Free — product hero

The Approach

Don't sell the sound. Sell the interaction.

Focus group research surfaced the insight that became the campaign: in a category where every competitor sold audio quality, TicPods Free's real differentiator was interaction. Tap to play. Swipe to adjust volume. Voice command through the built-in "Tico" assistant. It wasn't the best-sounding earbud — it was the most controllable one.

So the creative platform became control itself. The campaign was built around the language of touch and gesture — every photograph, every video beat, every section of the Indiegogo page designed to show a person commanding their audio without breaking stride.

The audience followed from the insight: people in motion. Athletes mid-sprint, commuters, dancers — the people for whom stopping to fumble with a phone isn't an option. The casting and photography were built around bodies in action, because the product's value only becomes obvious when your hands are busy.

TicPods Free — interaction concept

The Launch Film

Control, in motion.

The launch film carried the campaign's thesis into motion — each gesture-control feature demonstrated by a person mid-activity, never breaking stride to use their phone. The film anchored the top of the Indiegogo page and set the tone for the full launch.

The Visual System

Motion, restraint, and a single accent of energy.

The visual system paired a clean, near-monochrome editorial base — charcoal, white, soft grey — with the product's signature red as the single accent of energy. The restraint made the campaign feel like a considered design object rather than a gadget ad; the red carried the charge.

Two photography modes worked in parallel. The motion campaign — sprinters, dancers, bodies in full extension — proved the product stays in control when the person doesn't. The still life series — earbuds caught against soft neutral backdrops in active scenarios — let the product's color and form speak with the same restraint.

"The campaign had to look as composed as the product, and as fast as the person wearing it."

That tension — composed system, kinetic subject — was the craft of it. The grid, type, and color held steady and editorial; the bodies and objects inside the frames carried all the energy. It let the campaign feel premium and energetic at once, without tipping into either stiffness or noise.

Motion Campaign

Campaign photography — hero motion shot
Motion campaign — second frame Motion campaign — red colorway

Still Life Series

Still life — TicPods Free hero
Still life — TicPods Free 2 Still life — TicPods Free 3

The Campaign Page

A crowdfunding page is a story, not a spec sheet.

On Indiegogo, the page is the campaign. I structured the TicPods Free story page as a deliberate narrative arc — opening on the emotional promise of control, then unfolding feature by feature, each one tied to a real moment in an active life: when you move, when you listen, when you call, when you command.

Specs, comparison charts, and technical detail came later in the scroll — only after the story had earned the reader's belief. The page was designed so that backing the product felt like the natural end of a narrative, not a leap of faith.

View the Indiegogo page →

This is the part of the project closest to product and experience design — sequencing information, pacing a scroll, and designing the moment-to-moment journey from curiosity to conversion. The page's structure was as much a part of the creative as the photography in it.

Press

Reviewed by the tech press that matters.

Result

Funded in four hours. $2.8M in ninety days.

$2.8M

Raised across the campaign — with the full funding goal met within four hours of launch.

TicPods Free hit its funding goal within four hours and went on to raise more than $2.8 million over the 90-day campaign — one of Mobvoi's most successful product launches, in a category the brand had never entered before.

The campaign worked because it didn't try to out-shout the category leader on sound. It found the product's real advantage — interaction — and built every photograph, every frame of film, and every section of the page around it. A clear insight, carried consistently from research through to a funded launch.

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