Tuesday 26 March 2013

Spotify. They've blazed a trail in music streaming and now face a huge challenge. So they turn to advertising and their first TV Commercial.


'We are Spotify, we are for music', sounds like the Pedigree Chum Campaign 'We are for dogs' and you can't help but see in Spotify's new, first, TV Campaign, influences from Apple advertising.

I have no understanding of their copyline either, "Music is worth fighting for"? Sounds like a copywriter trying to be evocative without making sense. 

However, the point is that this is Spotify's bid to get into US Homes through TV advertising, promoting its music streaming business before competitors enter the space. And the space is hotting up.

Apple, Amazon and most notably Google, are all primed to enter the Spotify space. Big players with big money.

Music Streaming is different to music downloading (as in ITunes) in that it allows you to listen to tracks for a standard subscription. 

Launched in Sweden in 2008, Spotify currently has over 20 million active members with about 6 million paying and has a valuation of circa 3 billion usd. So it's a relatively young start-up that has grown and has trail blazed a new segment of streaming music. All from a base in Sweden. Not bad at all really.

Its success hasn't gone unnoticed and hence they're now faced with big players coming into their market - always a problem for a start-up. If you're successful, others will follows. And hence therefore, this new TV Commercial to try to develop subscribers before the big boys get hold. Which is exactly the right thing to do, whether you like the commercial or not.

Spotify deserves the success either way. And turning to Advertising will help it now. But it's now faced with the challenge of its young life. 

Monday 25 March 2013

Yoko Ono is 80 and wants more gun control. So she Tweets Lennon's bloody glasses. Scary stuff.




This is a Tweet from Yoko Ono and what makes it pretty scary is that they are the exact glasses that John Lennon was wearing when he shot outside the Dakota Apartments in NYC (where I saw for myself). That's his blood on the lens.

Scary too that Lennon was only 40, Yoko is now 80 and that he was shot 33 years ago. Yoko has 3.7 m followers on Twitter and she did this Tweet to enter the conversation on gun control. Pretty effectively I think.

Over 31,000 people die in the US every year from shootings. John + Yoko had always been involved in issues like this - the song Give Peace a Chance of course, symbolises that. So there's no doubting she wants more gun control and is using her celebrity with a controversial image to get it out there.