Spotify's Most Brilliant Marketing Campaigns, Revealed

Were you one of the 3,749 people who streamed It’s the End of the World As We Know It on the day of the Brexit vote?

At the end of 2016, Spotify launched a global outdoor advertising campaign using the tag line “Thanks, 2016. It’s been weird”. They really had a blast with this campaign, by using their masses of user data to poke fun at some of their customers and call them out on some of their odd music tastes. The ads rolled out across the US, UK, France and Germany.

This campaign introduced a novel, unabashed attitude to hyper-localised advertising and it’s clear that the streaming service ignored any ethical issues concerned and just had fun with it…. And boy did it go viral! We are here to show you some of our favourite quotes from the famous Spotify Billboard campaign, and hopefully, you can be inspired like we were by their shameless, hilarious creativity.

Our Favourites

“Dear person who made a playlist called: ‘One Night Stand With Jeb Bush Like He’s a Bond Girl in a European Casino.’ We have so many questions.”
“To the 1,235 guys who loved the “Girls Night” playlist this year, We love you.”
“Dear 3,749 people who streamed ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It’ the day after the Brexit vote, Hang in there.”
“Dear person in the Theater District who listened to the Hamilton Soundtrack 5,376 times this year, Can you get us tickets?”
“Dear person in LA who listened to the “Forever Alone” playlist for 4 hours on Valentine’s Day, You OK?”
“To the person in NoLIta who started listening to holiday music way back in June, You really jingle all the way, huh?”
“To the person who listened to “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” 52 times on the 9th of February, Everyone celebrates Pancake Day differently.”

And finally, our personal favourite: “Dear person who played ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentine’s Day, What did you do?”

Spotify's chief marketing officer, Seth Farbman, told Creativity, "There has been some debate about whether big data is muting creativity in marketing, but we have turned that on its head," adding, "For us, data inspires and gives an insight into the emotion that people are expressing.” The take-home message from this article is to have fun and get creative with your advertising campaigns! After all, it is ads like this which people talk about and stick in people’s minds.