Total 2021 US advertising spend was $296.4Billion.[1]Digital audio channels – Spotify and all its competitors – captured just $3.2Billion.[2]Spotify Advertising is successful ($745Million in 2020), but there’s huge growth potential if it can persuade its B2B target to put digital audio near the top of the media plan alongside TV, digital and social.[3]

Unsurprisingly, Spotify Advertising had tons of data to support just such an argument. Studies prove that digital audio outperforms on engagement, brand breakthrough recall and emotional resonance. But data can be boring. We had to find a more engaging and emotionally resonant way to make our case. Without any paid media budget.

To stoke conversation and coverage, we targeted the most influential CMOs. We started a conversation that was impossible to ignore and made it easy for them and their peers to get excited about Spotify Advertising and to join in.

[1]Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/429036/advertising-expenditure-in-north-america/

[2]Statista: https://www.statista.com/outlook/amo/advertising/audio-advertising/digital-audio-advertising/united-states

[3]Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/245125/revenue-distribution-of-spotify-by-segment/

To introduce Spotify Advertising and kick-start conversations with influential marketing leaders, we developed “A Song for Every CMO,” a collection of original musical tributes written for - and about - some of the world’s top CMOs.

Each song got the Spotify new-release treatment, complete with album art and inclusion on a unique playlist, exclusive to Spotify. We used Spotify’s user data to help identify our audience's favorite musical genres, and even checked in with each CMO to ensure that the musical foundation of each song fit as perfectly as our lighthearted lyrics celebrating their professional triumphs.

PR and our CMOs’ professional networks drove listens. The lyrics, the music, and the made-for-sharing story of how we activated Spotify’s platform turbocharged engagement. And conversation.

To keep Spotify Advertising top of mind, we mailed a platinum record to each of our CMOs, gifting a conversation piece as unique as our audio-first value proposition.

Target: We set out to make Spotify Advertising a “must-buy” for any advertiser. We had a rational story to tell with compelling data too. But even the world’s most elite marketers tune out boring ads. To get them to take notice, we’d need to capture their attention. Luckily, our target likes music and podcasts and are avid users of Spotify (just like the rest of us).

Approach: With no paid media budget, we needed to create a conversation our hard-to-reach B2B target couldn’t help but participate in. So we decided to seed our message with a small group of highly influential CMOs – B2B opinion leaders. Rather than risk going unnoticed like ordinary ads, we wrote them musical tributes personalized by their musical tastes and biographies. And we used PR and LinkedIn to fuel awareness and engagement.

We made a product demonstration on Spotify to kick-start conversation about Spotify Advertising.

We created “A Song for Every CMO” – an ever-growing list of original songs written specifically to target CMOs as demonstrations of Spotify’s unique data capabilities and its creative potential.

We implemented our strategy by targeting 14 CMOs of strategically relevant brands to Spotify Advertising. Then, we used Spotify’s data for insight into their favorite genres. Each song’s lyrics were crafted based on research into each CMO and each track was performed in the style of the CMO’s favorite music.After checking in to ensure the CMOs were ready to be memorialized in song, we worked with Spotify artists to record our CMO anthems at Spotify Studios.

Each song was treated like a new single and released at a key moment in the media planning calendar as part of a Spotify playlist, where it could be shared with our target CMOs and the industry as a whole, so anyone could listen.

We set out to drive conversation about Spotify Advertising.

Press coverage was widespread and exuberant, with rapturous coverage in mainstream outlets like Wall Street Journal, Axios and The Verge, as well as trade publications like Ad Age, Adweek, PR Week and more. 3.9M+ impressions within five days of launch![1]

We engaged our target on professional social networks like LinkedIn, driving streams thanks to enthusiastic posts from featured CMOs. The #S4ECMO hashtag earned hundreds of likes, shares and comments on LinkedIn in the days following launch.

But we helped business performance too. Huge spikes in engagement in Q4 2021 (10,000 new leads, 185,000 new visitors to the Spotify Advertising website) contributed to Spotify Advertising’s best year yet. With 75% year-to-year growth, annual sales topped $1.1 billion in revenue for the first time ever.[2]

[1] Spotify Internal “A Song for Every CMO” Campaign Report

[2] Spotify Advertising Internal Data