Febreze’s approach to marketing has always focused on reaching consumer where they spend the most time. But with TV viewership continuing its steady decline in the US1, Febreze needed to better reach young audiences, specifically Millennials. At the same time, Febreze realized streaming radio was on the rise and a perfect medium to make a meaningful Febreze connection with Millennials.

Radio was the perfect place to reach Millennials, but our researched also showed that Millennials loved their music, and even though they tolerate ads in their streaming playlists, that didn’t mean they liked them.

So, our idea was simple, create The Most Undisruptive Radio Ads. The #1 Air Freshener brand gave music streaming ads a fresh take. Instead of killing people’s vibe, we hacked the system with…music. Like really good music.

We analyzed 100M songs across the three largest music streaming platforms – Pandora, Spotify and Apple Music. All of this data was aggregated into 12 different musical trends. Then AI coded the sonic DNA of each of these groupings to create 12 original scores. Then we seamlessly slipped these ads into people’s playlists on streaming radio platforms, like Pandora.

We enlisted the help of a few music industry heavyweights who’ve produced fresh hits for some of the most famous musicians in the world, then composed original lyrics and scored them to catchy beats. Each song concludes with the irresistibly catchy audio pneumonic of Breathy Happy Febreze to drive continuity and memorability across our tracks.

A total of 12 song ads across the genres of modern funk, rap/hip-hop, indie rock, electronic pop and more were uploaded and streamed through a Pandora multi-year media buy. The songs were always paired with album art banner placements that were designed to emulate a real artist and be true to the genre.

Febreze songs were played over 1 billion times reaching more than 100 million people. Most importantly, people loved our music. Consumers took to social media to comment again, and again how Febreze songs sounds like some of their favorite genres. In many cases, they didn’t realize they were song ads until the end. People also talked about how irresistibly catchy our tunes were to the point that people couldn’t get our songs out of their head, or that they were humming along…just like they would do with hit singles from their favorite artists and playlists.