The Science of Sound is a multi-channel campaign that set out to better understand the science behind our enjoyment of music to create the ultimate driving soundtrack.

Drivers in Europe can spend up to 30 hours on average in congestion, with music listened to by 75% of Spotify users while driving.

By analysing people’s responses to certain music while behind the wheel, we endeavoured to create a ‘formula’ to help design driving music that elevates mood.

Working with Spotify and neuroscientist Amy Belfi, we developed and designed a study into music that included focus groups, drive-alongs with music stimuli and mood analysis.

Neuroscience research shows the powerful impact music can have on the brain – however most of this research takes place in a controlled lab environment. We wanted to research real-life scenarios in the car, and test our hypothesis that the positive benefits extended long after the journey has ended. We aimed to uncover what these benefits are and to what degree they impact a person’s day.

Science of Sound aimed to not only improve the driving experience for customers, but also deliver original music, artist-curated Spotify playlists and memorable filmic content that would bring the research to life.

The results of the research and data were pivotal to the outputs and success of this campaign.

By working with an established NYU neuroscientist and Spotify, we were able to develop a unique research hypothesis to help uncover insights into the positive effects of listening to music while behind the wheel.

The tracks that we used for our ride-along testing had varying combinations of energy and valence (mood), and the data showed that songs with higher energy had a positive effect on people’s moods. In addition, the research revealed the surprising finding that songs with sad lyrics and themes, but upbeat characteristics, can help boost a driver's mood up to two hours after driving.

These findings helped form the basis for the centre piece of our campaign, whereby world renowned artists Joe Goddard, Mat. Joe and Nao each created a track and playlist inspired by the research, hosted on Spotify. Three films were produced with VICE, documenting their creative process and the influences on their music, whilst subtly incorporating the new Fiesta in the mix. As elsewhere, the artists shared their work via the press.

The Science of Sound succeeded in its goal of showing how and why listening to music while driving can be such an emotive experience.

The filmic content delivered over 31.9m views, with an average view time of 1:51 minutes and a 75% engagement rate on Facebook.

Over 2m people chose to listen to the tracks created on Spotify.

231 pieces of press were generated, with an earned OTS of 1.5 billion, including coverage in GQ, Rolling Stone, Le Figaro, Pitchfork, The Daily Mail, Fader, Le Monde, the New York Post and many more.

Most importantly, the activity contributed to 54,000 Fiesta orders; over $900m in total revenue.

Science of Sound is a campaign with Creative Data at its core.

We worked with a NYU Neuroscientist, a researcher from Spotify and focus groups in 5 countries to understand just what it is that makes listening to music in the car such an affecting experience.

We applied these learnings by working with three world renowned artists to create bespoke music tracks and playlists inspired by our findings that were available on Spotify.

The whole creative process was documented in collaboration with VICE with a series of films targeted at their fans (who also happened to be our target audience).

The first two phases of our research informed and helped shape the structure of our ride-along activities.  We used existing Spotify research and data on listening to music in cars to help develop our in-car activities and curate the playlists (stimuli).  

Participants were chosen based on the user profiles that fit the small car category, with music as a passion point These participants were exposed to playlists based on existing Spotify insights into the listening behaviours of drivers, the types of music they listen to and the types of attributes that can be identified in music.

For the third phase we asked users to participate in ride-alongs. We collected data on people’s responses to different playlists within the vehicle, with each playlist varying in terms of musical attributes. 

Participants listened to the playlists while completing various driving tasks like commuting or running errands, and then completed an emotional survey post drive, including their emotional state before, during and after completing their driving task.

We then collected the data from the surveys to understand where and when participants felt most positive.

The situation and objective:

2017 saw the relaunch of the Ford Fiesta across Europe, with the key challenge being to transform the target audience's perception of the Fiesta and ensure they reappraise the car as a more premium and engaging offering.

The new Fiesta comes equipped with a high-end B&O Play sound system; instantly appealing to a target audience who we knew, through our research, had a huge passion use music to change their mood.

The brief:

Our brief was to turn this insight into a digital campaign that we could increase in scale as we approached our launch. Our client, Ford, wanted a campaign that encompassed both PR and more traditional digital channels.

They also wanted us to work with digital partners that were relevant to our target audience to realise the idea in an engaging and unexpected way.