Spotify's 2018 Holiday Ads Are Out, and They Know Just What Playlists You Made This Year

Podcasts get a shout-out, too

Spotify's out-of-home advertising campaigns have become a much-loved source of holiday cheer over the past few years. Always witty, the ads scrape the streaming music service's wealth of user data and package the findings into snackable comic headlines—celebrating, while also sometimes lightly mocking, what our collective listening habits say about us. 

The brand calls the campaign "Wrapped," and the 2018 version just went up Wednesday morning. 

This year's batch of ads focuses heavily on playlists, and also gives podcasts some visibility too. Check out some of the ads below. 

"Part of our creative process is to think about the cultural moments, tensions and oddities that defined 2018 and then see how music and podcasts helped people respond," says Alex Bodman, global executive creative director at Spotify. "That's why this year we decided to focus on Playlist creation; it's one of our features that allows people to get highly creative. The fact that users give the playlists such hilarious names or use them to comment on broader cultural trends, only makes the material richer." 

The campaign is a global one, with more than 350 unique ads, many of them specific to a local market. Over 50 artists, including Ariana Grande, Post Malone and Shakira with Maluma, will be featured in the campaign, representing each market's most popular musicians. The out-of-home, digital and social ads will hit countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, U.K. and U.S. 

"Our annual 'Wrapped' ad campaign is a true embodiment of our proposition as a 'platform for discovery,'" says June Sauvaget, Spotify's global head of consumer marketing. "Our users have come to expect the year-end 'Wrapped' campaign year after year, and are eager to see how their interactions on Spotify connect to what is happening across the global Spotify community. At the same time, it serves as a large-scale 'thank you' to our listeners for their collective impact in shaping the platform throughout the year while further solidifying our place in the global cultural lexicon." 

Below, check out ads from the 2017 and 2016 "Wrapped" campaigns.

2017 'Wrapped' ads
2016 'Wrapped' ads

CREDITS
Spotify "Wrapped" 2018
Global Executive Creative Director: Alex Bodman
Creative Directors: Dan Brill, Alexandra Sobiecki, Rajeev Basu
Global Brand Design Director: Rasmus Wangelin
Senior Art Director: Erik Herrström, Martin Berggren, Tal Midyan
Art Director: Steven Conaway, Angeline Toh
Designer: William Oswin
Senior Global Brand Director: Alexandra Tanguay
Senior Brand Manager: Christine Andren, Lauren Solomon
Creative Strategy: Zach Pentel, Nathan Doiev
Director of Integrated Production: Belinda Lopez
Senior Producer: Natalie Espinosa
Integrated Production: Jenna Alchin, Kenzie Tankersley, Andon Espeseth
Global Marketing Strategy & Planning: June Sauvaget, Neal Gorevic, Manu Orssaud, Krista Scozzari
Head of Global Media: Scott Marsden
Global Media Manager: Sarah Schlein
Global Head of Artist and Label Marketing: Marian Dicus
Head of Artist Marketing, International: Madeleine Bennett
Head of Artist Marketing, North America: Rosa Asciolla 
Data Science: Race Archibold, Margot Kurfess, Ellion van Buskirk, Sidra Ahmad

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Tim Nudd
Tim Nudd was editor in chief of the Clio Awards and editor of Muse by Clio from 2018 to 2023.

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