What Scaleups Can Learn from Spotify Wrapped: Turning Data Into a Brand Experience with AI
- Laura Derbyshire
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Every December, millions of people interact with the same thing, and it's not some new game or celebrity ad, it's a data report.
Spotify Wrapped has become one of the most successful annual brand moments in modern marketing. It turns personal data into a story people want to share - voluntarily, widely, and with pride (or humour!). Wrapped isn’t just a campaign; it’s a productised piece of storytelling that drives engagement, new users, earned media, and cultural relevance.
For scaleups, Spotify Wrapped is more than a clever idea. It’s a blueprint for how to use data and AI to build deeper audience connection, strengthen brand equity, and create moments that cut through the noise.
So how do they do it? And how can you do the same?
1. Wrapped transforms data into identity
Most brands have data. Very few turn it into something meaningful. Spotify Wrapped doesn’t just show listening stats; it brings human psychology to the forefront and tells people what those stats say about them:
“You’re in the top 1% of fans for this artist.”
“Your 2024 personality type is ‘The Adventurer.’”
Wrapped positions data as a reflection of self, and that is super powerful, going all over TiKTok like the Ant and Dec age reveal example.
What scaleups can learn: use AI to translate raw customer behaviour into insights that reflect identity, habits, or progress. Some examples are:
A fitness app creating a personalised “Year in Strength”.
A B2B SaaS platform giving each user a “Productivity Profile” or “Growth Score”.
A fintech app offering a personalised “Money Mindset” or “Spending Style”.
This is where AI becomes transformative, because it can cluster behaviours, spot patterns, and convert them into stories at scale.
2. Wrapped is engineered for sharing
Spotify didn’t just build a report. They built the perfect shareable format.
Bright colours, punchy lines, social-optimised ratios, designed to appear in stories, feeds, and group chats. Users become evangelists without realising.
What scaleups can learn: If you want your audience to share something, don’t expect them to do the work. Make it:
Visually distinctive
Social-first
Concise
Personal
Status-building
AI tools like CreativeAI, Canva’s Magic Studio, or custom-built templates let you generate on-brand social assets automatically from user data:
Every customer gets a personalised highlight card.
Every team member gets a branded annual impact summary.
Every product user gets a “Your Year of Progress” shareable tile.
This isn’t just good marketing, it’s a distribution mechanic.
3. Wrapped is culturally timed
Wrapped arrives at precisely the right moment, the Christmas and end-of-year cultural reflection season. People are primed for review, nostalgia, and storytelling.
What scaleups can learn: Use AI to predict audience behaviour, seasonal sentiment, or industry moments, then release personalised content at the exact point people are ready to engage. For example:
Quarterly dashboards for customers timed around renewal cycles.
Seasonal personalised insights (e.g., “Your Summer Strategy Profile”).
Product-usage stories aligned with industry events.
AI enables scalable, timely personalisation, without a team manually producing anything.
4. Wrapped creates a two-way relationship
The genius of Wrapped is that it reinforces loyalty. It makes you feel seen. It makes you want to continue the relationship next year so your “story” improves.
What scaleups can learn: Use AI to create a feedback loop that deepens the relationship, such as:
Personalised recommendations based on past usage
Automated content or campaigns aligned to customer behaviour
Prediction models that show “What you could achieve next quarter if you continue like this”
This positions your brand not just as a service, but as a coach, a companion, a guide.
5. Wrapped is a brand strategy, not a campaign
This is why most brands fail when they try to copy Wrapped. Wrapped isn’t a seasonal stunt - it’s the expression of a brand that has built personalisation into its product architecture.
Data + AI + design + behaviour + culture.
It’s the integration that matters.
What scaleups can learn: If you’re thinking about how to “do your version of Wrapped”, ask these strategic questions:
What customer data do we have that tells a meaningful story?
What AI tools can help us interpret it creatively?
What does our brand want people to feel when they see their data?
What moments in our industry or customer lifecycle could we own?
What would make people want to screenshot and share it?
This is where scaleups can outmanoeuvre incumbents. You’re faster, closer to customers, and more able to experiment.
So what does your version of Wrapped look like?
Whatever the format, the principle is the same:
Turn data into a story. Turn AI into a creative engine. Turn your brand into something people want to talk about.
Wrapped works because they tap into human emotions: identity, reflection, recognition, and status. AI now gives scaleups the capability to build these kinds of personalised experiences without the complexity Spotify had 10 years ago.
The brands that win the next decade won’t be the ones shouting the loudest. They’ll be the ones who understand their audience the deepest and give them something worth sharing.
If you want to explore how OSER can help you build your own AI-powered brand moments, I can create a blueprint tailored to your product, your data, and your growth goals.
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