Spotify’s Sunte Ja hits the high note with Indian consumers

Spotify India’s first multi-lingual national TV-led campaign ‘Sunte Ja’ has struck a chord with consumers in the country with its strategic media mix of TV, OOH and Digital. This campaign follows Spotify’s first geo-localised and hyper-contextualised marketing campaign ‘There’s A Playlist For That’. Featuring Bollywood actors Anil Kapoor and Ishaan Khattar, the current campaign is built on the insight that music is in the social fabric of all we do - right from daily experiences to special moments. The campaign’s creative digital activations generated 3 billion impressions, and digital amplification of the TVC and native films have garnered 350+ million views since its launch.  As a part of the campaign, a total of 4 TVCs in Hindi, Telugu, and Marathi aired across 75+ GEC, movies and English cluster channels, as well as a few regional ones. To get people talking (and streaming) even more, Spotify launched an artist-led OOH campaign where names of popular tracks were synchronised to create quirky one-liners that appeal to the audience’s emotions and sentiments. The 100+ OOH billboards also featured artists who sang those tracks, including Amit Trivedi, Badshah, Armaan Malik, Diljit Dosanjh, Vishal & Shekhar, Sunidhi Chauhan, Nucleya, Shanker Ehsan Loy, Salim Sulaiman, Jonita Gandhi, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Kate Perry, Alan Walker and Shawn Mendes. Recognising key factors such as visibility, a larger creative canvas, being less intrusive, and effective capture of off-screen time, Spotify used OOH as a pivotal media for ATL communication as part of its larger media strategy across metros and regional markets. In addition to TV, the ‘Sunte Ja’ campaign also leveraged digital channels to integrate Spotify’s value proposition of its wide music library, on social media. Spotify took Antakshari, a game so culturally ingrained in India and gave it a modern-day twist, garnering 8100 engagements and reaching 4.1 million people. Spotify also released six digital films -Chill Karo, Bae, Calm Down, Happy To Be Home, Bollywood Mush and Focus Now - that visually represent everyday millennial struggles and music as the background score in those situations. Viewed over 3.5 million times, the films resonated well with the audience. The TV ads were also amplified across digital platforms - Slow Breakfast, What’s in the Age, What’s the score? and ‘K’ Pops, which highlighted that users have access to the latest music and uninterrupted background play. In fact, K-Pops, a film created for India’s K-Pop community used ‘Boy with Luv’ by BTS as the soundtrack, led to an unprecedented engagement. #AnilKapoor trended in India for his “cool dad” role in the film, resulting in the BTS Army accepting him as one of their own. The film crossed over 1 million views on social media in just 12 hours and received 63k engagements-- comparable to Bollywood film trailers in the same time period.