Thursday 1 December 2016

Extreme audience targeting - Spotify billboard campaign

Advertising agencies often use user data to ensure their campaign effectively addresses their target audience. This is usually done in an unobtrusive way in which the advertiser deliberately avoids making reference to individual consumers.

This advertising campaign, for the online streaming service Spotify takes a very different approach, using very specific user data to draw attention to very specific audience practices. One way of looking at the campaign would be that it's a playful look at the uses and gratifications model, which suggests that every audience member can use or take pleasure from a media product in completely different ways. The preferred reading is therefore one of inclusivity, that anyone can use Spotify, in any way they wish.

However a negotiated reading may involve the audience finding the use of accrued online data as intrusive, disturbing, and even threatening! Regardless, the campaign has clearly got a lot of people talking.

Check out the images in this gallery and consider: is this an appropriate way to use audience data?

Thanks to Holly for sharing the link!