Spotify’s New Ad Campaign Uses Subtle Humor To Promote Its Free Services
Spotify is a popular music-streaming service available in a mobile phone app and on desktop devices. It’s a creative and cool brand that connects its millions of users with millions of song titles, artists, videos and podcasts.
It offers both free and paid versions — with the free version supported by ads. But in recent years, the service has started to lack in oomph. Other competitors have quickly risen in the industry — and Pandora is one of them.
While billboards are not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your typical Spotify ad, this is exactly what the leading print design companies do best - translate innovative brand (or digital service) offering into stunning and clever physical collateral!
Spotify decided to shake up its free platform, giving it an upgrade that was more beneficial for all users.
And to go alongside this impactful new upgrade, the brand rolled out a new ad campaign in the form of billboards and videos to remind people about the effect music has on the world.
The campaign is called “Love What You Love” and their billboards certainly promote that sense of happiness and liveliness.
These ads are made up of a bright, colorful background, a bold pop of text and a Spotify screenshot that shows a particular song title. The design as a whole stands out in a clean and clear way, but it’s the text that really hits you right off the bat.
These phrases are short, sweet and to the point. And they are packed with humorous and silly sentences that instantly make you chuckle.
Each phrase begins with the words, “The free app for people who,” and continues with a phrase directed at consumers and connected to the song title it’s matched with. And there’s a clever quality to these words that is instantly approachable, connecting with viewers on an emotional level.
Some of the phrases include: “The free app for people who aren’t looking for anything serious,” “The free app for people who know exactly how they like to do it,” “The free app for people who need lots of attention” and “The free app for people who want to fall in love with someone who is bad at love.”
Just looking at these phrases puts a smile on your face. They're cute. They're fun. They're relatable. And they connect.
You can’t ask for better textual content.
Spotify knows how to interact with its audience using engaging phrasing, and these billboards are just another example of that.
Spotify Continues To Utilize User Data To Target Its Audience More Deliberately
Spotify first made headlines in 2015 with its integration of targeted user data in its billboard ads, using people’s listening history and calling out specific users — though not naming them — in a hilarious and captivating way.
And the brand is continuing this trend by promoting the song titles that users are listening to and matching them with an equally fun phrase.
Using consumer data is a powerful tool for marketers in advertising campaigns. They have a way of connecting more directly with intended audiences, creating an overall brand that consumers feel they can trust.
When a brand shows that they understand and know their audience inside and out, it puts consumers at ease. And it makes users feel like the brand cares about them as individuals, not just as dollar signs.
It also shows the expertise of the brand and its robust team of dedicated innovators that they know how to use such powerful data and leverage it to their advantage.
Spotify is one of the first brands to successfully leverage consumer data in a comprehensive and successful way in recent years, and it elevates the company as a whole as one that is ready to take on its competitors head-on, providing its consumers with the music-listening experiences they deserve.
Spotify Keeps Its Colorful Branding Consistent Across Its Print Ad Campaigns
Spotify’s latest ad campaigns capitalize on the user data and creative personality it has infused into its ads in the past, and this is vital for a cohesive and comprehensive brand identity.
With humor and color, Spotify is keeping up with its robust brand identity, further aligning itself as an industry leader and giving its customers an approachable and exciting experience that stays with them.
Spotify takes its presence outside of the digital world with these billboards, making their presence more well-rounded and bombarding consumers everywhere that they are. And it’s fun. It’s not overwhelming or jarring.
It’s actually welcome and wanted.
Color is a great way to keep branding consistent across mediums — and these bright pops of vibrant color are seen in Spotify marketing videos, billboards and in-app experiences. And they have been for years now.
Spotify is synonymous with creativity and liveliness that matches the experience of music listening. And it emphasizes this importance every chance it gets.
Spotify’s New “Love What You Love” Campaign Effectively Shows The Brand's Value
Spotify is a music-streaming service that offers free and paid music subscriptions to its users. And in its biggest global campaign ever — “Love What You Love” — the brand chose to roll out a newly upgraded version of its free service to cater to more audiences.
This ad-supported, but otherwise free service launched in April. And alongside this new offering came a myriad of billboard ads and promotional videos to create a sense of excitement and urgency around this new upgrade, urging more users to turn to Spotify for all of their free music-streaming needs.
These billboards really capture the beauty and excitement of listening to music, using humor to cleverly grab attention and make users laugh at the creativity and relatability of the words written out. But they also use video in a stunning way to make a tangible impact.
There are a few themes to these various videos — horror, suspense and peacefulness just to name a few. And these videos have a way of telling such a succinct and striking story in a few minutes time, showing users the powerful effect music alone can have.
In the above video, a sense of dread and fear fills the scene. There are obvious spooky elements, but what ties all of it together is the power of music. And that’s exactly what the brand is trying to promote.
Music is universal, and it’s something that can connect all people across separate walks of life.
And Spotify wants users to know that they can like whatever music they want, and their free service lets them search for their favorite artists and songs. They don’t have to be restricted and they don’t even have to pay to listen to what they love.
This is a campaign that plays with emotions but wittily infuses humor and relatability to create a friendly and approachable atmosphere that users new and old are happy to interact with.
Why These Spotify Billboards Make Such A Powerful Impact
Spotify has always been a leader when it comes to its marketing and advertising campaigns. They are champions of humor and relatability, pioneering the use of user data in their ads in a clever and cool way — their ads don’t come off too corporate, figure-focused or boring. They’re quite the opposite, actually.
This latest ad campaign is another winner for the brand, and it does a phenomenal job at keeping the Spotify brand consistent and chic. To promote its upgraded free streaming service, the in-house team rolled out the “Love What You Love” campaign that really emphasized the impact that music has on the global community.
And it worked.
Right from the start, the clever messages that line these billboards are sure to put a smile on your face.
They infuse humor and witty repertoire to grab attention and promote approachability. These messages are geared towards specific audiences too — Spotify began creating targeted ads based on user data in recent years, and these ads continue that trend by providing commonly-listened-to songs alongside comments that really hit home.
There is also an authority in the way the brand keeps its branding consistent. In the last few years, all of the ads that Spotify has rolled outcome from different campaigns, but they're all tied together through humor and color in a powerful way that widens the brand’s scope and keeps its brand identity front and center — making it a brand that consumers can truly trust.
These ads continue that trend in their fun and lively nature. They are colorful, cool and targeted in a powerful and effervescent way that is sure to grab the attention of anyone walking or riding by.
Graphic designers started with one simple query: Who doesn’t love music? That’s the question Spotify is asking here, and to make music more accessible to everyone, it decided to give its free service a boost so that more people could listen to the tracks that they really love.
These billboards really do continue the dominance of Spotify in the industry, and we couldn’t be more excited.
