Spotify believes its report card in India so far represents both success and learning their head of marketing explains why it needs to stay agile, creative and genuine
Spotify, almost a year after its launch in India, believes that its report card so far represents both success as well as learning as it prepared well from a product, content, and brand perspective Martech News.
Neha Ahuja, head of marketing for India at Spotify stated this shows in the feedback the platform has heard for its user experience, playlists, and the quirky marketing campaigns it created to ensure relatability to its users. she explains that Great validation of this is the fact that Spotify has won the Users Choice App award for 2019, on Google Play Store India. Specifically, on marketing, They have been focused on localizing storytelling of Spotify to ensure they align with the country’s cultural nuances and moments. Whether it’s the festive season, IPL or moments such as weddings, traffic jams, and workouts, they have done many things differently in India from hyper-localizing their outdoor campaigns to leveraging data to tell the high moments that made up 2019 here. She also added that they are in India for the long term and want to continue learning so that they can grow the market and appetite for audio streaming. Martech
Ahuja says the launch of Spotify in India was backed by a symphony of deep market insights, innovation, and intent, coming together to provide a platform that truly elevates the audio streaming experience for Indian users. She claims Spotify today is among the top few music streaming apps in the market in terms of consumption, pointing to how Spotify has outperformed its growth forecast for India by 30% as reflected recently in the Q3 results i.e. ending Sep 30, 2019. she added that Spotify puts their user at the center of its experience, and as they strengthen that, they are certain about being even more loved here.
As a marketer in the second-most populous country in the world, Ahuja says her challenge is to remember India’s vast audience base demands brands to be agile, creative and genuine in their outreach, in order to appeal to the varied cultural nuances. That is why Spotify considers India more of a continent than a country.
The other challenge, she continues, is that because India has a cluttered environment, and it is always critical to stand out and be noticed and liked. That means overcoming this challenge is really about creating awareness, bringing a user to the platform, and building stickiness based on the experience that the brand provides.
Spotify’s approach to dealing with these challenges is to design its media mix according to the business task at hand. It is often a strategic mix of owned, earned, and paid media to reach its Indian audiences through campaigns that tap into the local, social, cultural nuances. The platform has also engaged with artists and influencers to engage its user base and drive users to the app.
For its launch campaign, called There’s a Playlist for That, it employed a mix of out-of-home and digital where the outdoor ads used quirky and witty one-liners specific to the local area, while the digital ad films spoke to the newer, tech-savvy generations that love shareability.
Meanwhile, for its first national TV led marketing campaign, Sunte Ja, was focused on reaching its target audiences through dominant genres of GEC, Movies, and English Cluster, as well as regional channels.
The campaign was also supported by digital and OOH activations including cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Bangalore, and Guwahati. Most recently, it brought alive the globally anticipated Spotify Wrapped marketing campaign to India with a local twist, ‘Well Played, India’ that encapsulates a few of the most popular streaming trends India created on Spotify in 2019.
Ahuja explained that “Our mix for campaign design and deployment is based on the two dimensions of effective execution and feedback. While the former enables to maximize our outreach to relevant audiences, and build resonance, the real success is determined when users act as advocates of the campaign by engaging with and sharing our content.”
She continued further that all their partners are integral to their success and an extension to what Spotify is as a brand. India, as a market is in a league of its own and Spotify, has worked towards creating a strong network of partners that are great to collaborate with, driven through innovation, creativity, and agility in servicing an ever-evolving industry and diverse consumer market.
In 2020 and for the next decade at least, Ahuja says Spotify believes that the future of audio is limitless. Going forward, the platform’s focus is to progressively build its platform through its ‘audio first’ approach, based on purposeful innovation inspired by its users.
she explained as they progress in their journey here, they believe success will be driven through their three pioneering pillars of experiences being, personalization, discoverability, and depth in localization.
Spotify was recently named one of the ‘most innovative’ brands for using Twitter in APAC for its campaigns in Thailand and Indonesia.