Harman Helps Veteran N.C. Integrator Leverage Luxury Audio Brand Names

Audio Advice has been a go-to name for consumer audio enthusiasts in North Carolina for more than four decades.

In the high-density areas of Raleigh (where it’s based) and Charlotte, the company has taken on a leading expert role. Customers look to the integrator for the latest audio solutions and education, among all its other services.

To showcase a wide range of loudspeakers and components, the integrator has benefited from being a Harman dealer. That includes being able to demonstrate and sell from its portfolio of JBL Synthesis, Lexicon, Revel, Mark Levinson and Arcam.

“We’ve been selling Lexicon for a long, long time. We recently picked up the JBL Synthesis line, which has been terrific in terms of not just home theaters but our audio rooms as well,” Newman said at the Harman booth during CEDIA Expo 2019 in Denver, Colo.

In the past year, Audio Advice has leveraged Harman to ramp up its marketing efforts and capitalize on brand recognition.

“We’ve jointly pushed a marketing program, both in our market and nationwide, with a lot of videos that we’ve produced and a lot of collaborative work on social media,” Newnam explains.

“It’s really been a terrific experience in terms of getting out each of the Harman brand names and also the Audio Advice name.”

Tighter Teamwork with Harman Takes Results Up a Notch

Elevating the relationship will enable Audio Advice to stay on the forefront of audio trends as well, because it can tap into Harman’s product road maps and impending releases.

“We believe we’re going to continue to be at the forefront of the launches of new products with them, whether it’s Mark Levinson or JBL, and we expect to continue to add more and more products into the [Raleigh and Charlotte] stores and continue to develop the relationship,” he says.

On the sales and installation front, Audio Advice is pulling together what Newnam says is a “killer home theater” project. The installation incorporates a full Dolby Atmos system featuring JBL Synthesis to complement a massive screen.

Newnam says building rapport with the local Harman rep has also made a difference when it comes to collaborating on a client’s system, working with a client, troubleshooting, etc.

“We’ve found that it’s not just the corporate-level support but the local support we’re getting that’s been so great,” he says.