‘Bragging without the selfie’ – the rise of Spotify Wrapped and copycats | Global News Avenue

Throughout December, Instagram is awash with photos of Christmas trees, snaps of holiday work parties, and screenshots of the songs people listened to most this year.

That’s because Spotify has released Wrapped at the end of every year since 2016. The campaign brings together what users listen to most, often including their favorite songs, artists and genres.

Dr Gillian Brooks, a lecturer in strategic marketing at King’s College London, said it was now ” plastered all over every possible social media platform known to man”.

Its Wrapped feature works really well, she said, because music is personal and people like the nostalgia of seeing the songs that marked their lives over the past year.

Since Wrapped went viral every year, other businesses have jumped on the bandwagon, from language learning app Duolingo to bank Monzo, which have all created their own personalized “Year in Review” summaries, as well as Apple Music and Amazon Music, among others Other music streaming apps.

Professor Jonathan Wilson, professor of brand strategy and culture at Regent’s University in London, believes people have ulterior motives in sharing these end-of-year comments, especially on apps that people use to track benign activities such as fitness and education. .

“It’s like bragging but without the selfies,” he explains. “A lot of people don’t want to take selfies for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that people feel a little bit intimidated, a little bit narcissistic.”

People share information on social media if it “reinforces the image we want to publicly portray of who we are and who we want to align with,” he said.

Apps like Strava will tell you how far you’ve run or biked this year, while Duolingo will tell you how much time you’ve spent learning another language.

Goodreads provides you with images you can share on social media showing the books you’ve read this year, along with details about average page length and your favorite genres.

Professor Wilson added: “Data is a really good way to be humble and brag, rather than taking a selfie wearing your best clothes, surrounded by your best people and all your belongings.”

Professor Caroline Wirtz, professor of marketing at City University London, agreed: “It’s less like bragging and more grounded.”

“It’s become something on the calendar,” Professor Wirtz said. “We’re waiting for the John Lewis Christmas advert and we’re waiting for Spotify Wrapped.”

Other brands following the trend include Tesco and Sainsbury’s (representing your favorite groceries), Trainline and Uber (representing your most frequent trips), Monzo and Lloyds (representing your spending habits), Xbox and Nintendo (representing your games ).

Professor Wilson told the BBC that such copycat behavior was inevitable – the prospect of people promoting a company or product seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

As Dr. Brooks said: “It’s free advertising for them.”

These experts say some year-in-review features are more tongue-in-cheek, which brands hope will make them more relevant and easier to share with customers.

People generally don’t post information about their finances on social media. But Monzo found a way to make the year in review shareable by telling people whether they were one of Greggs’ top consumers.

Reddit tells users how far they scrolled (in bananas).

While Professor Wilson said people generally don’t want to post mundane things on social media such as “which roll they bought”, Sainsbury’s is showing shoppers if they are certain local products largest buyer.

it leads to people brag online About being the biggest consumer of paprika, toilet cleaner or pickled gherkins.

The year-in-review feature may raise questions about how much data a company collects. It is widely accepted that the vast majority of apps and websites that people may use collect large amounts of data and use it for marketing purposes.

Dr. Brooks suggests that “people blindly accept online privacy preferences” because they want to do whatever they want to do by continuing to visit the website.

Data privacy is “not as big an issue as it used to be,” she said. “If we get more targeted advertising as a result, most people I’ve spoken to agree with that.”

Although people like to keep some information about themselves private, they seem to have no hesitation in sharing their hobbies and leisure activities online.

“Paradoxically, when you share a selfie, you share far less information about yourself than you share data showing what you have done,” Professor Wilson said. “People seem more willing to do that than share photos of myself.”