Brief:

LinkedIn wanted to promote their online video course offering, LinkedIn Learning, to business professionals between the ages of 21-45 in order to help this audience boost their skills and attain career goals.

Solution:

LinkedIn Learning is all about helping people achieve personal and professional goals — so they teamed up with Spotify to speak directly to listeners looking to drive their career path forward. The brand’s spring 2020 campaign aimed to raise awareness about their suite of online video courses covering diverse topics for budding professionals. The aspirational ads encouraged this audience to stay motivated amid a working world that never stops changing.

The campaign adopted an optimistic tone amidst a changing work environment during the spring of 2020. One video paired a shot of a LinkedIn Learning course called "How to Manage Feeling Overwhelmed" with upbeat copy that felt like a personalized pep talk: "Keep learning to rise to any moment.” Meanwhile, a video tailored toward career growth used simple but powerful phrases — "Open new doors," "Learn new skills" — to emphasize the positive promise of putting in the extra work upfront.

Although some of the creative specifically targeted job hunters preparing for their next role, overall the campaign spoke to anyone seeking to improve their professional skills. The ads provided value and utility, offering Spotify listeners tangible resources they could apply to their lives — both professional and personal. For instance, to entice audience members to redeem a free month of LinkedIn Learning access, the 30-second audio ads described specific takeaways from expert-taught courses like "Investing in Yourself," which breaks down self-improvement into an easy, four-step process. This type of personal-growth-focused message had the highest impact — perhaps speaking to a particularly modern mindset.

Thanks to Spotify’s Streaming Intelligence, LinkedIn maximized impact by speaking to listeners where they were — largely at home. By utilizing Audio Everywhere, they shared their message across connected devices like TVs, computers, and smart speakers. In other words, places where streaming consumption had increased as people were working at home and using Spotify to soundtrack their day. Still, LinkedIn didn’t overlook on-the-go listeners — even if “on-the-go” just meant “doing the dishes with earbuds in.” They made use of Sponsored Sessions, our mobile format that offers 30 minutes of ad-free Spotify listening in exchange for watching one of the campaign’s videos.

In the end, LinkedIn drove significant lifts across all brand metrics. Listeners were motivated by the power of possibility — refining existing strengths, developing new skills, and overall self-improvement. This push for betterment led to robust engagement, with the Sponsored Session CTR in particular surpassing Spotify benchmarks. By serving as an encouraging presence during a time of great change, LinkedIn proved to be a trusted partner invested in both career and life success.

Impact:

• Thanks to uplifting messages that provided positive reinforcement, LinkedIn saw a 19 percentage point lift in recall of their Spotify ads.
• By reaching listeners via a combination of audio and video, LinkedIn saw a 10 percentage point increase in awareness of LinkedIn Learning.
• The campaign drove a 3 percentage point lift in intent to use LinkedIn Learning, as listeners heard and saw tangible ways these courses could improve their lives.