Will Spotify's latest content-led initiatives help gain cultural relevance in consumers' lives?
This week, Hamsini Shivakumar, Founder, Leapfrog Strategy Consulting, analyses Spotify's influencer-led content marketing strategy through the filter of semiotics
Spotify recently collaborated with comedians Rohan Joshi, Rahul Subramanian, Sumukhi Suresh, Saloni Gaur, Kaneez Surka and Kenny Sebastian to highlight Spotify’s playlists, creatively called ‘burnlists’, as they poked fun at their friend and colleague Tanmay Bhat. The content creators shared this light-hearted ‘roast’ on their Instagram handles.
Ever since its launch in early 2019, Spotify’s communication has reflected an astute understanding of its Indian audience — specially the ads with Anil Kapoor that carry the same vibe as the playful, good-natured friend you always enjoy having around.
The Anil Kapoor ad:
Their recent content-led campaign is no different when it comes to the feel and quality of concept and execution, but offers the brand a unique boost in the lives of consumers.
Audience growth after ads have run their course
Ads, no matter how good, don’t really have an audience of their own the way content creators do. They occasionally make for fun viewing but wouldn’t necessarily have the brand’s audience seek out the YouTube channel they’re available on, hit subscribe and click the bell icon to be notified as soon as the next one comes out.
Content creators, in contrast, do nurture that type of loyalty and grow an audience of a different kind. One that sticks around, listens to them and will engage with everything they put out. So, it only makes sense for Spotify to go beyond the numbers it has attracted through ads by collaborating with popular comedians and tapping into their audience base.
What really makes this move deliver is finding content creators whose communication approach overlaps with theirs.
Both Spotify and the comedians put out funny and relatable content, the latter obviously so and the former through content like the following:
With comedians, it is common to see them giving the Indian youth’s take on topics considered hush hush here, but comparatively normal conversations in the West:
(Stand-up comic Aishwarya Mohanraj talks about her mother finding her pregnancy test)
Cultural participation that creates brand awareness outside the category
Remember how Tanmay Bhat grew infamous post the 2015 celebrity roast created by his content company AIB and more so after his unpleasant imitation of revered Indian personalities Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar in 2016?
With that memory in mind, you might wonder why any brand, especially one that’s only over a year old, would go anywhere near the roast format.
Compare Bhat and Spotify’s versions of insult comedy: one challenges a cultural code, the other doesn’t.
Bhat’s AIB showed roasts in an unfavourable light by associating them with swears, bawdy jokes, insults that somewhere touched upon unspoken truth and harsh criticism that Indians are only capable of whispering behind people’s backs. It brought out into the open and concentrated into a single hour what is either kept subtle or at least away from public screens.
His mimicry further reinforced insult comedy as a form of content that considers nothing sacred and can attack even the public figures we consider god-like.
But in an honour culture, where respect is considered more valuable than money, public image once tarnished is lost and sex offends if not left behind closed doors, Bhat’s version was deemed un-Indian and a poisonous Western import.
Spotify’s approach to the roast format is careful and clever. It places Tanmay Bhat, the one person the whole country would be comfortable roasting, at the centre of the activity.
With his friends going at him with jokes, all insults are kept family friendly, thereby showing the format as capable of moderation.
Rohan Joshi makes a silly one about his age, likening him to an Indian uncle who enjoys sending ‘good morning gifs’ and another cheekier one commenting on his desire for attention:
Rahul Subramanian calls him out for being online and on all possible social media platforms for large parts of the day and urges him to take a break with mock frustration:
Sumukhi Suresh teases him about being a gamer and vlogger, wondering about his lack of a day job and comments on his weak attempt at humour through Snapchat filters:
Spotify also had Tanmay add onto his roast by having him insult himself, a choice sure to soothe those previously upset with him, at least to some degree.
As a young brand looking to gain cultural relevance in consumers’ lives, through content, Spotify has smartly recycled an idea with a history of heat and controversy and reintroduced it as per our context. Turning the jokes palatable has put the roast format onto a journey of being gradually adopted by the Indian culture.
And it has done all this while keeping its product a relevant part of the exercise.
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