Dive Brief:

• Pandora has launched a “Sounds Like You” campaign with digital ads, billboards and murals, according to a press release. The campaign also extends to artist and influencer programs with Pitchfork and Vice’s music channel Noisey, digital shorts, and social media activations involving Snapchat lenses and geofilters, and a Pandora emoji on Twitter. 
• Pandora partnered with DigitasLBi San Francisco on media strategy, and digital and out-of-home production. The campaign creative was developed by Pandora’s in-house team. It features 18 portraits of musicians in photographs placed next to a ‘P’ assembled out of album art that’s meaningful to them. The images will be central to digital ads that invite listeners to check out curated mixtapes. Out-of-home ads contain Snapcodes to unlock the mixtapes. 
• The campaign is timed with Pandora’s broad rollout of Pandora Premium, its on-demand music streaming offering, to listeners via the App Store and Google Play. The personalized service, which costs $10 monthly, had been available previously on an invite-only basis. 

Dive Insight:

Pandora seems to be trying everything in the kitchen sink when it comes to ad formats for its “Sounds Like You” campaign as it looks to build awareness its new offering in the competitive premium music streaming space. In particular, Pandora is enveloping social media with the intent of sparking interest among 18- to 34-year-old consumers and its existing audience, 80% of whom listen to Pandora on smartphones. It’s tapping Facebook canvas ads, Instagram carousels, a plethora of Snapchat ad units and an auto response program on Twitter that enables Twitter users to receive mixtape suggestions based on emojis they tweet. On top of that, the campaign is reportedly the first to put Snapcodes on out-of-home ads.

Given all the ad formats, it’s not surprising the “Sounds Like You” campaign hits on several hot marketing trends. Influencers, emojis and Snapchat native ads are amassing marketing converts. On Snapchat, Pandora’s deployment of lenses and geofilters tracks with a J.P. Morgan study finding they are among the Snapchat ad formats Snapchat users engage with most. Emojis are increasingly a go-to component of marketing efforts as brands attempt to speak to consumers in their digital language. And influencer marketing is growing as brands seek cost-effective methods to connect with social media audiences. In the case of Pandora’s campaign, the company is harnessing a one-two punch of influencers and famous musicians to amplify messaging.

While Pandora may be inaugurating Snapcodes in out-of-home ads, they are mounting in ads generally. For its “Jeep Hair, Don’t Care” campaign, Jeep incorporated them at events and within its social channels. The series Planet Earth II and Gatorade have used them, too. Although still unproven, they have the potential to boost the engagement of targeted consumers and, without-of-home ads that might be ignored, they could catch consumers’ eyes to propel interaction.