In this campaign, we got right into the heart of culture by turning what could have been a stereotypical announcement of a new Lyrics feature on Spotify into a talent-led campaign that led to unprecedented user-generated content results. We pranked musicians into singing their own songs wrong, which was highly entertaining for fans, and then leveraged on their reach and fandoms to spark user-generated content which resulted in our target audience singing and creating awareness on behalf of the brand in an entertaining way - for themselves.

Spotify launched a new feature to allow users to enjoy an even better music experience, with real-time lyrics displayed on the app. But there was a problem – listeners are so immersed in audio when using Spotify, that it’s hard to get them to notice or use the new lyrics function on-screen. Our goal was to create a campaign to drive awareness for the feature and show how Spotify Lyrics can elevate their music enjoyment.

For this idea, we tapped onto a behavioural truth. Most people think they know the lyrics to their favourite songs when they in fact do not. So, we decided to put an end to misheard lyrics once and for all by launching the new feature in an unconventional way. Not by using fans, but the artists themselves. We pranked them into singing their own songs...wrong! Leveraging on their reach and fandoms to drive awareness of our Lyrics feature.

Our objective was to create awareness of the Lyrics function to increase brand love for Spotify. It was crucial to get audiences engaged and share content to demonstrate the fun lyrics can bring.

We maximised eyeballs through YouTube, digital media, and local OTT platforms, while leveraging TikTok – the most popular social platform for our Gen-Z/Millennial target audience and one with music at its core – to drive engagement with KOLs and encourage user-generated content.

Audience Insight: Everyone thinks they know how to sing their favourite songs...even when painfully, they don't. Many fans sing the lyrics for years before embarrassingly finding out they’ve been wrong. It was time to put an end to misheard lyrical misery.

We decided to show the benefits of Spotify Lyrics by leveraging the artists themselves - the ones who spend days and weeks pouring their hearts into songs, only to have their lyrics misinterpreted.

In a social campaign that ran across South-East Asia, we firstly sourced the most common mistakes made by fans when singing along to their favourite songs, then developed a prank to surprise the artists with their most popular misheard lyrics.

Disguised as an exclusive session for Spotify, we asked the artists to perform on camera – but when they discovered ludicrous lyrics hidden in the song sheet, they couldn’t hide their surprise.

We launched the campaign across digital media, OTT platforms, YouTube and TikTok.

We then leveraged the artists’ large fanbases to help spread our campaign further – with each artist inviting audiences to duet with them on TikTok – but with wrong lyrics only. Both creators and fans continued to find unique ways to engage with the campaign, led by KOLs giving their own creative take on misheard lyrics for the songs.

The results sang for themselves. With over 148M video views (outperforming planned media targets by 1800%), view through rates of 87% on Skippable Ads, and over 590k TikTok Engagements.

The campaign exceeded social media targets by 229% and drove an increase of 46% brand mentions in the Philippines, while in Thailand we exceeded social media targets by 490% and achieved 70% share of voice (+28pp) during the campaign period.

Proving that with Spotify's 'Sing It Right' campaign, some things can be so 'wrong', they’re just right.