Spotify Wrapped is the most-copied campaign of the decade. Almost no one gets it right.
It looks like data. It works because it is a mirror. Here's what everyone misses when they try to build their own Wrapped.
Brand New Money Editorial24 June 20261 min readSpotify
Every December, Spotify shows you the year you had — your top artist, your minutes listened, the strange late-night phase you thought no one noticed. You share it. Everyone shares it. It's the single biggest organic marketing moment on the internet.
Copycats tend to do one thing: they show the user a leaderboard. Spotify does something different. It gives the user a story about themselves. It's not ‘here's your ranking'. It's ‘here's who you were this year'.
The difference sounds small. It's the whole game.
✱
Producer’s Take
What we’d tell you.
If you have any personalised data, do not build a leaderboard. Build a story.
A leaderboard says: ‘you're user #47,282.' A story says: ‘you were the person who kept coming back to Ghazals at 2am.' One flatters. One recognises. Recognition is why people share.
