Above and Beyond: Spotify’s journey to become the go to platform for everything audio with Disney+ Hotstar
Spotify’s vision is to make sure the app is the go-to destination for everything audio, whether it’s music or podcasts. With this in mind, the brand was looking for a platform that could enable it to penetrate the market while successfully continuing to engage customers across its numerous content genres.
In this episode of Above & Beyond, Neha Ahuja, Head of Marketing, Spotify India, explains how Disney+ Hotstar enabled Spotify to further its vision.
As a brand, Spotify looks at three dimensions to assess the suitability of any platform:
- Width: To fulfil the top of the marketing funnel
- Depth: To match Spotify’s numerous content genres and to target the right audience cohorts
- Time: To ensure that the brand is always on with users and to build a habit of them returning to the app for more content
With its wide range of content suitable for audiences across genres and the ability to create sharp audience cohorts, Disney+ Hotstar proved to be an ideal fit.
She further adds that the OTT platform also enabled the brand to build campaigns as per the four levers that they focus on: scale, targeting, measurability and innovation.
“The last year has been very different. Several big movies have been released on OTT, changing the way marketers look at the medium. We are now talking to a wide range of audiences. There are certain programmes like Dance + that have worked extremely well for us, for instance. People love music and dance; we have to talk to them on Disney+ Hotstar. And when you’re talking about scale and engagement, one has to mention the IPL – an absolute no-brainer for us,” she added.
In addition to its campaigns such as ‘Dil Filmy hai’, Spotify family Premium, across the year on entertainment and sports, the music streaming app also leveraged the platform’s influencers to meaningfully engage with its audience and drive higher conversions.
Elaborating on the lever of innovation, she talks about the placement of the Spotify tab in the movies tab on Disney+ Hotstar. This enabled the brand to drive organic traffic to its app.
From a measurability perspective, the brand is continually looking at moving the needle on two fronts: awareness & consideration of the brand and hard numbers on acquisition and consumption. Neha says “For some of our recent campaigns, we’ve seen via the brand lift study that the awareness went up by about 7% and the purchase intent was almost up by 9% and that would make any marketer very happy.”
In the episode, she also discusses the future of India’s OTT ecosystem and states why it can’t be ignored by any marketer.
Here is the entire episode.
