Spotify sets the tone for 2018 in the spirit of ‘hope and optmism’

Spotify is once again making hilarious and clever use of its data in its end-of-year campaign, with ads that pluck nuggets of people’s listening choices from 2017 and translate them into 2018 “goals.” Whereas last year’s campaign from the streaming giant was based around the tagline, “Thanks 2016, it’s been weird,” this year’s global wrap-up imagines what its audience might do in 2018 based on the events, cultural and political, of 2017.

Created by Spotify’s in-house agency, the out of home campaign has been unveiled in seven U.S. cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Nashville, and Washington D.C) and in 18 global locations. As with last year, it includes some executions hyper-localised to different markets with mentions of artists popular there. For example, in Sweden, one billboard reads: “Leave 2017 behind with as good conscience as the person who streamed “Ain’t My Fault” 1355 times this year — Zara Larsson, one of the most streamed artists of the year.”

Seth Farbman, Spotify CMO, shares, “When we started to look at this year’s data and what the news was every day we realised there was a lot of fatigue and exhaustion with all the events in 2017. So rather than go back and relive that exhaustion, we thought we would look forward and bring in a spirit of hope and optimism.”

The campaign also includes life-size cutouts of various artists, including Cardi B and Bruno Mars, that will be placed in locations in New York, L.A. and Miami; the idea is that people will take selfies with the cutouts and use them as an “analog filter” for posting on social. Farbman says the idea came from the insight that artists often post selfies of themselves standing in front of billboards with their faces on them. “Our creatives believe that this is an idea that could work really well,” he adds.