To celebrate the year in music on Spotify, we decided not to talk about ourselves. Instead, we focused on the stories of our users – their wonderful habits, their shared emotional reactions to a tumultuous year, their boundless creativity, and their dedication to the artists they loved.

And because 2016 had been such a divisive year, we focused on what we all had in common - that we’re all a little weird.

“Thanks 2016. It’s been weird”, became the key theme of the campaign, which was executed across social, digital display, email, in-product integration, and OOH.

We started with an out-of-home campaign based on the listening data of Spotify’s 120+ million users.

We discovered 164 of unique data stories and shared them as open letters to our listeners.

Next, we took to social media to tell the biggest music stories in scientific “charts and graphs”. And in display advertising, we subverted typical end-of-year countdown content by counting down things like the year’s top “panda-related songs” and the top songs about food.

We sent out 90 million “2016 Wrapped” emails, every single one recapping the user’s personal year in listening. And in product, we placed a personalized “2016 Wrapped” playlist with their 100 most-listened to tracks of the year.

And in the spirit of the holidays, we collaborated with some of the year’s most popular artists on Spotify to create a series of holiday gifts, which we delivered to the top 1% of their fans on Spotify.

We measured the campaign in three parts: subscription growth, interaction with the product, and consideration – and had successful results.

With regard to growth: during the course of the campaign’s run, Spotify subscription growth easily broke all company records.

Product interaction exceeded targets, as personalized “Top 100 songs” playlists on the platform helped generate over 1 billion streams. The Wrapped email generated 30 million opens (a 30% open rate.)

The films supporting the superfan gifts were viewed over 10 million times. The effort drove 1,548 pieces of media coverage and over 1.2 billion earned impressions. Consideration rose on average 10% in markets where the campaign was executed.

Our strategy was to use data at the core of the executions, driving mass awareness with provocative OOH, and deeper engagement and earned media across digital and social channels.

The end of the calendar year is a key time for Spotify, offering the opportunity for the brand to further its status as a cultural and musical force, by using the edge it has as a tech company – data.

In 2016, Spotify used this moment to launch its biggest brand campaign ever, with ambitious business objectives.

We were charged with crafting a global campaign that would appeal equally to both existing users and non-users. The desired outcome was an increase in Monthly Active Users (MAU), by appealing to existing and lapsed users. And an increase in subscriptions, by reaching new users.

The landscape was not only more crowded in terms of competitors, including Apple, but culturally the timing was difficult. 2016 was a notably awful and divisive year, and celebrating it with a traditionally optimistic year-end campaign posed a challenge.