How do you wrap up a year like 2016? In a year that was all about our differences, Spotify tuned into our users’ listening habits to remind us...we’re all a little bit weird. We found that thousands of people were listening to the exact same song the day of the Brexit vote. Someone in LA listened to the song “Panda” 4,454 times. Exactly 21,043 Londoners mourned the loss of a famous nightclub with the same Robyn track. And 1,235 guys in New York loved the “Girls Night” playlist.

We found 164 of these unique data stories and shared them as open letters to our listeners, placing each piece of creative in the exact neighborhoods where these listeners lived. The hyper-localized campaign was executed across 8,000 boards in 11 different countries under the tagline, “Thanks, 2016. It’s been weird.”

Alongside the hyper-localized placements, we also developed creative takes of “year-end lists” and broader “open letters” which could be used in any location.

The campaign was launched at the very beginning of December across all 11 markets, allowing us to get out ahead of competing “year in review” content. And the most provocative executions were photographed and shared with PR outlets on the day of launch - allowing for not just the earned media that came with press coverage, but also for easy social sharing by consumers.

We measured the campaign in three parts: subscription growth, interaction with the product, and brand awareness – and had significantly successful results on all accounts. With regard to growth: during the course of the campaign’s run, Spotify subscription growth easily broke all company records. The increase in MAU exceeded targets, with over 1 billion streams directly attributed to the campaign, and over half a million reactivated users. And consideration of the brand grew by an average of 10% in the markets that ran the campaign, compared to those that didn’t.

What we didn’t expect was the digital life these outdoor pieces took on. Images of the OOH executions were shared by consumers over 669,000 times.