Why Spotify Wrapped-esque year-in-review posts took over Q4 brand marketing
This morning, users opening Oura’s app will be invited to look back at their accomplishments.
The health tech company’s feature recaps users’ highlights from the year. It tells them how much they slept over the last year, what their cardiovascular age is as well as other wellness-related personal data bits the company has amassed. In addition, the company is highlighting macro trends from its million-plus user base, such as New Zealand being the country with the highest sleep score and the U.S. being the most stressed-out country.
“The year in review is something Oura has done annually for the past couple of years,” said Bryn Harrington, senior product marketing manager at Oura. “It’s a really loved member moment — something our members look forward to every year.”
While the UI and look and feel were designed by Oura with the help of an external illustrator to make the product pop, it shares many traits with another company’s annual year-end product: Spotify Wrapped.
Spotify Wrapped is a decade old as of this year and has become one of the most shareable brand marketing moments in the fourth quarter. On TikTok, #SpotifyWrapped currently has 13.5 million posts. While year in reviews are nothing new, Spotify’s packaging and ubiquity have recast the phenomenon. The company’s approach allowed it to be shareable by design and its focus on individual slides showcasing specific specific traits made it appear more than just a compendium of data. As Vox wrote in 2021, Wrapped created a way for Spotify to showcase its reams of personal data in a way that somehow doesn’t feel intrusive.
And as with all things successful in marketing, it’s now being copied everywhere. Brands like Starbucks, Duolingo and Tinder have released their own personalized year-in-review widgets for repeat customers to consume. Others have poked fun at Wrapped’s popularity. Gymshark, for example, parodied Wrapped with a series of social media images. “You smiled at your gym crush 2,498 times and still never spoke to them,” according to one slide.
Marketing agencies also have begun adding it to their repertoire. Front Row Group produced Wrapped-esque content for its clients like Oster, Jergens and Nexxus. “By finding ways to creatively tailor the trend to your specific audience and product offerings, you can generate significant engagement, build brand loyalty and drive tangible business results,” wrote Katelyn Winker, vp, client strategy & services at Front Row, in an email to Modern Retail. “It shows that brands deeply understand their target audience’s interests, behaviors and preferences to ensure the trend aligns with their values and needs. We feel the ‘Wrapped’ trend format is effective because people also love reflection and seeing personalized summaries of their year.”
Of course, when successful consumer-facing brands jump on a trend, so too do the B-to-B marketers. Companies like Semrush and CreatorIQ all published their own Wrapped on LinkedIn posts along with a several individual consultants and strategists touting their business prowess.
“Brands are always trying to tap into what people are talking about online,” said Rachel Karten, a social media consultant and author of the newsletter Link in Bio. “I know that social managers are very much on the lookout for when Wrapped is coming out and want to be the first.”
It makes sense. Karten said those posts typically perform very well for brands and they’re easy to produce. In fact, Wrapped-esque posts have become such a cottage industry that platforms like Canva make templates emulating the product’s look and feel.
Yet, with any crowded marketing space comes sloppy attempts. “A lot of the brands that copy [Wrapped’s] UI make up vague stats,” said Karten. “It’s not real data — maybe it’s funny, but it’s not rooted in any truth.”
Indeed, the opportunity really is for companies that both have the data, and are also able to repurpose it into something both engaging and informative. As Zarina Stanford, CMO at Bazaarvoice, said, the successful brands launching these sorts of year-in-review programs are “actually serving up some of the insights they’ve learned about a particular shopper — and, in turn, are offering it as an insight or a value-add to you.”
Stanford thinks it’s natural that more brands are jumping on the Wrapped parade and showcasing it on social media. More people are using social for product searches and are expecting more content from brands on these platforms. “Everything is social — everything is digital,” she said. “If I can provide value then our consumers are going to follow us more. It’s part of the efficacy and loyalty piece — and I think it’s a great tactic.”
For Oura, the company is clear that it didn’t copy-paste Spotify’s playbook. According to Harrington, as Oura’s member base has grown, more customers have asked for year-end recap data. “We don’t directly pull design inspiration from Spotify Wrapped,” she said. The overall rise in year-in-review posts from other brands, she went on, “has probably been influenced by Spotify Wrapped, [but we have] a unique design that speaks to Oura.”
And while most of the other brands launching these campaigns are doing one-and-done posts, Oura is keeping tabs on its year in review, given the amount of work that went into it. It tracks how many users are clicking it and tries to correlate that with how many people open the app on a daily or weekly basis. “Then, of course, how many people are sharing that,” said Harrington.
This trend likely isn’t going away — as long as Spotify Wrapped is produced and continues to be shared, brands are going to join the parade. But maybe it’s time for more creativity to break through the noise. “I think it will always be a thing when it comes out,” said Karten. “I would love to see brands plan for it more [and] choose something weird with it more.”