Learning from past campaigns to improve future outcomes

In business, as in life, hindsight is 20/20. However, the benefit of looking back on past experiences is that it allows us to apply the lessons we’ve learned to improve future outcomes.

In a recent Insight Brief, we looked back on the best social listening campaigns of 2023. Here, we dig deeper into two of those campaigns with Infegy’s product suite to provide additional insight into what, exactly, contributed to their success.

Spotify Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped is an annual feature provided by music streaming platform, Spotify. As year-end approaches, users can view a personalized summary of their listening habits throughout the year, including most-played songs, top artists and the total amount of time they spent listening to music. The feature also includes fun statistics, such as the user’s most-listened-to genre and the number of new artists discovered. Spotify Wrapped also includes visually appealing graphics and shareable content.

^{Figure 1: Post volume attributed to Spotify Wrapped; Infegy data, December 2013 through December 2023.}

As you can see in Figure 1, post volume related to Spotify Wrapped has grown significantly over the years as the brand has expanded its reach and user base. This type of exponential growth is unusual for a recurring campaign, such as Spotify’s, and illustrates the brand’s continued success in engaging with consumers.

^{Figure 2: Consumer sentiment attributed to Spotify Wrapped; Infegy data, 2013 through 2023.}

A Sentiment analysis of Spotify Wrapped (Figure 2) shows that most people have responded positively to the campaign throughout the years. There was a spike in negative sentiment in 2022, and it’s still too early in the month to identify whether 2023 negative sentiment will echo 2022.

^{Figure 3: Negative Sentiment keyword analysis of posts related to Spotify Wrapped; Infegy data, 2013 through 2023.}

Digging deeper into negative sentiment, we found that many of the negative comments were more self-deprecating, referring to embarrassment about what specific artists people listened to, rather than negative sentiment regarding Spotify itself. This is illustrated in Figure 3 with the occurrence of words such as “embarrassing” and “music taste.”

^{Figure 4: Emotional document distribution attributed to Spotify Wrapped; Infegy data, 2013 through 2023.}

Continuing our analysis, let’s consider Emotions related to Spotify Wrapped (Figure 4). One of the best measures of a campaign’s success is its ability to generate positive emotions within it’s audience. The emotions surrounding Spotify Wrapped are overwhelmingly related to Love and Joy, which suggests that Spotify users love this campaign. This positive Emotions analysis is one of the best holiday presents the Spotify marketing team could have hoped for!

^{Figure 5: Themes attributed to Spotify Wrapped; Infegy data, 2013 through 2023.}

If the Spotify marketing team is celebrating the emotional response to the Spotify Wrapped campaign, the sales team is overjoyed by the results of the Themes analysis (Figure 5). The Promotion theme ranks #1, which is what we typically see in social media data, but the big news is that Intent and Purchase also rank very highly. This is significant because Intent is a key indicator of future purchasing decisions.

^{Figure 6: Top Artists attributed to Spotify Warped; Infegy data, 2013 through 2023.}

We can gain additional insight by looking at Top Artist trends over the last 10 years. In Figure 6, notice how Taylor Swift shows up more than any other artist. Both Jungkook and Bad Bunny experienced a 1000% increase in post volume, but Sentiment regarding the two was very different, with Bad Bunny experiencing 81% positive Sentiment and Jungkook experiencing only 31% positive Sentiment.

^{Figure 7: Narratives colored by sentiment attributed to Spotify Wrapped; Infegy data, 2013 through 2023.}

To round out our analysis and understand how Spotify stacks up against its competition, let’s take a look at Spotify Warped versus Apple Music (Figure 7). Notice the difference in Sentiment between Spotify (mostly green) and Apple (mostly red). This tells us that sentiment regarding Apple Music in relation to Spotify Wrapped is mainly negative. This negative sentiment may be due to the fact that Apple did not offer a compelling year-end campaign to compete with Spotify wrapped creating a sense of FOMO from its user base.

Apple’s #ShotOnIphone

While Apple’s Sentiment is negative compared to Spotify, the brand received some good news this year regarding its long-running Shot on iPhone campaign.

Apple spends billions of dollars on camera technology with each successive iPhone generation. The company started the #ShotOnIphone campaign in 2015 to encourage users to post and submit photos taken on their iPhones.

This campaign, while not growing as rapidly as Spotify Wrapped, has been successful over time and continues to generate post volume today.

^{Figure 8: Post volume attributed to Apple’s #ShotOnIPhone campaign; Infegy data, December 2021 through December 2023.}

Notice in Figure 8 how post volume has remained relatively consistent over time, with periodic growth surrounding the holidays.

^{Figure 9: Channel Universe Distribution attributed to Apple’s #ShotOnIphone campaign; Infegy data, December 2021 through December 2023.}

A channel distribution analysis shows us that the majority of posts related to #ShotOnIphone occur on Instagram (Figure 9). This makes sense, as the campaign is a visual one and Instagram is largely focused on curated images.

^{Figure 10: Emotional Documents Distribution attributed to Apple’s #ShotOnIphone campaign; Infegy data, December 2021 through December 2023.}

For more insight into the Apple campaign, let’s take a look at an Emotions related to #ShotOnIPhone. In Figure 10, notice how emotions related to Love, Joy, and Trust are much more prevalent than more negative emotions related to Anticipation and Fear. That’s good news for Apple as it strives to maintain a positive brand image.

Using social listening to drive the success of recurring campaigns

As illustrated by the two examples above, social listening can be a powerful tool to help launch, monitor, and strategically modify recurring social media campaigns. Spotify Wrapped and Apple’s #ShotOnIphone campaigns both achieve the brands’ goals of effectively driving positive Sentiment, Emotions and Themes, ultimately improving consumer engagement and excitement surrounding both brands.

Put simply, social listening data provides brand managers and marketers with valuable insight to help drive successful social media campaigns.

To learn more about how Infegy’s social listening platform can help improve sentiment and drive engagement for your brand, request a custom demo.