Spotify has already made a name for itself with its inventive consumer pushes and was a previous winner of our A-List In-House Agency of the Year honor. But in 2021, the brand broke out in a big way in the b-to-b space with its “All Ears on You” campaign. The integrated push created out of FCB New York spanned multiple platforms, including Spotify itself; digital film; display; social media; out-of-home and more. The component that most excited the Creativity Awards jury was “A Song for Every CMO,” which included bespoke, highly personalized tunes honoring top creative marketers across the industry, from Kimberly-Clark, CVS, Intuit, General Mills, Frito-Lay and Indeed.

The campaign then broadened with a gorgeous spot and out-of-home ads illustrating how Spotify listeners become insulated and entranced within audio “bubbles”—making them the perfect audience for advertising. The effort aimed to show how audio ads can cut through media clutter and debuted at a crucial moment when audio advertising accounts just for 7% of marketers’ media spend—though it has been shown to outperform other channels such as TV and digital. 

“It’s so smart and so simple," said Creativity Awards Work Jury Chair Keith Cartwright, president and chief creative officer of Cartwright. "It was also born from their platform; they’re the only music platform that could have done it. It just checks so many boxes.”

“I know a lot of CMOs who were jealous they weren’t included in that,” added Juror Juan Javier Peña Plaza, executive creative director and partner at Gut. “If that’s not an amazing KPI, I don’t know what is.”