In late 2014, Spotify, the world’s number one music streaming service, was planning its much-anticipated Canadian launch. Since its U.S launch in 2011, Spotify’s rapid growth had captured Canadian imaginations and its lack of availability to date meant that there was a great deal of pent-up demand to finally trial the service locally.

Our primary objective was to drive traffic to Spotify and acquire new users by introducing Spotify and driving curiosity among the Canadian public in a way that allowed us to speak about Spotify (vs. speaking only music): the role we play in connecting people to the music they love, how we could enhance their moments, and directly addressing barriers consumers hold, to allow Spotify to transcend the ‘streaming category’.

The pivotal moment for the campaign came when we uncovered the insight that the majority of Canadians search for and listen to music based on moods (happy, sad, feeling blue, etc.) and moments (party, waking up, etc.). They use music to add layers that uplift, or motivate, to get the party started or to unwind during their commute home. They use music to soundtrack almost every aspect of their lives and we could use Spotify to tell us what they were listening to, right down to a neighbourhood.

So we mapped our target’s listening habits back to their daily routines and paired with hyper local insights (beyond just music), to create a campaign that held a mirror to their lives.

Spotify invited music fans to access “Music for your world”, a campaign customized to a Canadian audience through the neighbourhoods they held so dear to their hearts. A campaign “for music fans, by music fans”, it was the “plus” that set Spotify apart from the rest and the culmination of a valuable consumer insight paired with real time user data.

The campaign used a combination of meticulously prepared Spotify neighbourhood insights, first party data, and influencer inputs to promote playlists tailored to Canada’s highest streaming neighbourhoods.

The result? The creation of 30+ playlists created to match iconic Canadian neighbourhoods and based upon the actual music most listened to by the people who live there, including both the most streamed and most distinctive tracks (distinctive being tracks regularly listened to in those locations only). A campaign that celebrated Canadian neighbourhoods through music, while showcasing Spotify as being more than just a streaming service, providing music to soundtrack almost any aspect of your world.

Within days of launch, there was an almost immediate spike in activity across all our custom playlists. In fact, our most-streamed playlist rose to be the #2 playlist on Spotify by the end of the campaign, and overall streaming in Canada (on Spotify) increased by 71% vs. the previous period. We also became the #1 music app in the App Store on both iOS and Android, increased daily registrations by 21% and grew our net promoter score by 30 points.