Spotify's 'Wrapped' Ads Celebrate the New Normal That Was 2021

Spotify on Wednesday unveiled its traditional year-end “Wrapped” campaign, which, as always, digs into the music and podcast streaming platform’s reams of data to take a temperature check of pop culture. The overarching theme this year is that 2021 was totally normal—well, at least compared to 2020.

The work, created in-house, once again leans heavily on out-of-home executions, which offer witty takes on our collective listening habits, informed by the billions of streams throughout the year. As you can see below, each one references the idea of normalcy in some way—ironically, of course, since the year was far from normal.

“We’ve spent a lot of time dreaming about a return to ‘normalcy,’ but as we sat down and began reflecting on this year, we realized there is no such thing as ‘normal’ and that’s something worth celebrating,” says Alex Bodman, global executive creative director at Spotify. “On Spotify, ‘normal’ is whatever you listen to, however you choose to listen to it. We have never been one-size-fits-all and that’s what has always made ‘Wrapped’ so compelling—it’s all about you.”

Indeed, along with the OOH, Spotify has also created the most robust in-app “Wrapped” experience yet, including “2021: The Movie” (your most-streamed songs paired with scenes from a movie); a visualization of your “audio aura”; an interactive data-based playing-card game; a “Wrapped” version of the new “Blend” feature, to see how your music taste matches up with friends; and more.

There are also short videos like the ones below:

The campaign will run across traditional and digital OOH, connected TV, online video, social media and web in 33 markets worldwide. The Spotify app experience will be available in over 100 markets.