In its latest advertising campaign, Spotify says thanks to a weird 2016 by showcasing the fun side of user data, revealing interesting and strange listening habits of the music streaming service's users.
The billboard campaign, which was released this week in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France and will soon be launched in 10 other countries, was developed by Spotify's in-house marketing team and is so far the company's biggest global advertising initiative.
Spotify Billboard Campaign 2016
"Thanks, 2016. It's been weird," reads the tagline that is common among all the billboards, an apt one when looking at the user data tidbits featured in the campaign and considering the many events that transpired within the year.
"Dear person who played Sorry 42 times on Valentine's Day, what did you do?" one of the billboards says. There are also localized versions, such as the one in New York that says, "To the person in NoLita who started listening to holiday music way back in June. You really jingle all the way, huh?"
"Dear 3,749 people who streamed It's The End of the World As We Know It the day of the Brexit vote, hang in there," says one billboard in the United Kingdom, referring to the results of the referendum that officially expressed the wishes of the people for the country to leave the European Union.
"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," could make its case to be the funniest among all of the billboards, though.
The Big Idea Behind The Campaign
According to Spotify chief marketing officer Seth Farbman, the idea for the data-driven advertising campaign hatched from the company's end-of-year campaign for 2015. The Year in Music campaign revealed that the user data of Spotify users across different regions contained some interesting tidbits and insights.
"That led to the idea of reflecting culture via listener behavior," Farbman said, showing that big data is not depriving marketing of creativity as some have implied.
"For us, data inspires and gives an insight into the emotion that people are expressing," he added.
Spotify's 2016
True to its campaign, 2016 has been an interesting year for Spotify. The music streaming service reached the 40 million mark for paid subscribers in September, with the company saying that it is committed to offering a free streaming tier for its music service as it rejected the exclusive strategy of rival Apple Music.
Spotify, however, saw its fair share of bumps on the road, including the issue that the company's app is slowly killing hard drives due to writing gigabytes of junk data.
