Anxious About the Climate? This Fact-Filled Spotify Playlist Could Mellow You Out

Is climate anxiety keeping you awake at night? If so, Swedish utility company Vattenfall and Nord DDB created a Spotify playlist just for you.

The campaign features six "Super Soothing Climate Progress Engineering Tracks," which aren't musical, but informative. They enlighten users—in straightforward, mildly cheeky, and technically detailed terms—about developments in solar energy, wind power, hydro technology and green transportation.

Taking cues from sleep and meditation apps, Nord DDB designed these deep dives (each running between 9 and 12 minutes) to give listeners peace of mind. When you know what steps are being taken to improve the world, and truly understand the concepts driving change, you'll worry less, the thinking goes—and perhaps even sleep better, too.

Hey, it works for the folks in these cute campaign videos:

"While we are of course acknowledging that the climate challenge is far from solved, we would still like people to know about the work being carried out every day, and that positive progress is actually happening when it comes to the goal of becoming fossil free," Vattenfall brand communications manager Paul Morel tells Muse.

By tapping into the audio-relaxation trend, "we hope to become appealing and relevant with our message to a larger audience that we usually don't reach," he says. "A great takeaway for us is to be an integrated part of our audience's life, and have our message come through directly in their ear. If someone also picks up on some of the very in-depth details on how we're working to reach our climate goal, we will of course be very happy."

But will users actually listen to the tracks—which are kind of dry—for any length of time?

"Well, we don't know," admits agency art director Jack Strömer. "To be fair, that's not the whole point with this. We wanted to get the message through that many positive things are happening when it comes to innovative climate technology—everything isn't dark." This campaign makes that point, and casts Vattendfall as an innovator, even if users hit pause a few seconds in, he says.

For now, the tracks are available exclusively in Europe. So, the rest of us will just have to keep binging on Gregorian Chants to unwind.

Nord DDB hit similar notes a year ago in its upbeat, forward-looking campaign for Euro-communications giant Telenor. And Adidas' Stan Smith sneakers recently extolled the virtues of "Bein' Green" (i.e., sustainable) with help from Kermit the Frog.

CREDITS

Advertising agency: Nord DDB
Media agency: OMD
Production agency: BRF
Director: Mikael Marcimain