After two years of the pandemic, the concert season finally returned to Colombia in 2022 with the Estéreo Picnic Festival, one of the most prominent musical events in the country.

This year, Spotify was not a sponsor of the festival. Instead one of its major competitors in the country, Claro Music, was. Therefore, our goal was to steal the show during this very popular cultural event in Colombia and make fans’ and artists talk about Spotify without paying a single dime.

To get artists to play the songs their fans wanted to hear the most in Colombia, we created #ListenToYourFans, a campaign that gave music recommendations to artists based on their fans' musical tastes and data collected from the Spotify platform.

After reviewing set-lists of the scheduled performing artists’ previous concerts, we cross-analyzed songs that were not played during these concerts with user data from Spotify to see which Colombian fan-favorites were missing. We then recommended these songs to be added to the artists’ performances at the Estéreo Picnic Festival, so that no favorite would go unplayed.

Data gathering involved desk research and data from Spotify. We compared the setlists of the invited artists, prior to the Estéreo Picnic Festival, with data from Spotify in Colombia and discovered that some of the most popular songs in the country had not been played in any of their previous shows. To get artists to play the songs their fans listen to the most on Spotify, we needed an idea that would motivate artists to play it live.

We took advantage of Spotify’s data and song names to direct message artists and stealthily suggest particular songs, that were widely listened to, and loved by their fans in Colombia.

The call to action "#ListenToYourFans" appeared in each of Spotify's outdoors and social media posts, as well as in the reposts of thousands of fans who asked the artists for one thing; to play their favorites when in Colombia.

We first collected and analyzed data of performing artists' set-lists prior to the Estéreo Picnic Festival, and compared them with the Spotify data in Colombia to see which were the most popular songs in the country that these artists did not play in previous concerts.

We then took advantage of data and song names to create targeted messages to artists, and placed them in all the places we knew they would be; at the airport, on the way to the hotel, near the hotel, and in their private hotel rooms.

To help our campaign gain traction, we also shared our messages on Spotify social media. In partnership with various music influencers, we also encouraged fans to share these messages by tagging their favorite artists in posts, asking them to listen to them.

- 5 headliners adjusted their setlist.

- +100k festival attendees hearing their favourite songs.

- Only $40K invested.

- 1500x mentions on social media for Spotify during the event.

- 2500% returned in earned media.

- 100% positive sentiment.