Ahead of the 2023 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, we get a behind-the-scenes look at this year’s event—plus a few thoughts on some of Spotify’s most recent platform innovations—with Grace Kao, Spotify’s Global Head of Advertising Business Marketing.
Hi Grace! Tell us about yourself and your role at Spotify.
Hello there! I lead Spotify Global Business Marketing. What that means is that I have the great honor of enabling brands and businesses to find and connect with their fans in innovative, creative ways on Spotify. A little bit about me: I live in San Francisco, I’m a huge basketball fan (anyone else seen Air yet? So good!), and I consume a tremendous amount of boba every week! I’ve been in marketing for my whole entire career, and it never gets old for me.
What's Cannes Lions all about, and why should advertisers pay attention?
Cannes Lions has come to be about many different things. But at its core, it’s a festival that celebrates creativity. It’s about the industry acknowledging work that took risks and resonated; work that changed perceptions and moved businesses forward; work that provoked, innovated and challenged the status quo. Win or lose, it’s always so wonderful to see what your peers are doing—and take in that moment to truly feel inspired by the work and the people behind it, and celebrate our industry as whole. It’s also a global showcase—I’m always blown away by the different kinds of thinking and approaches to advertising around the world.
This is your first time at Cannes Lions with Spotify. How does it feel to be involved? Can you tell us about some of the activities planned and what you’re most excited about?
To say I’m excited for Spotify Beach at Cannes would be an understatement. This year our Beach will feel like a festival within a festival—from Sound Baths and a state-of-the-art podcast recording studio, to our playful activations and the special guests joining us on stage during the day. I’m excited about all of it. And that’s before our nighttime concerts have even begun!
In terms of the daytime programming, we’re doing things a little differently this year. What’s the format and what can advertisers expect to hear all about?
We really want to try to mix up the format for daytime. Our Global Business Marketing team came up with this great idea of having a mix of “masterclasses” and “playdates” taking place each day. We’ll be inviting brand leaders, creators and podcasters such as Alex Cooper, Emma Chamberlain and Trevor Noah to lead masterclasses on subjects ranging from fandom and driving culture to mastering the interview. We also wanted more engagement and interactivity. So this year our very own Xavier “X” Jernigan, Head of Cultural Partnerships at Spotify and the voice behind our AI-enabled DJ, is MCing a "Songs of Summer" themed beach mixer and hosting a game of bingo that will bring our iconic playlist to life in a fun and interactive way.
The launch of DJ feels particularly pertinent, given the high interest in AI right now—can you tell us more about this product and how you see Spotify using AI down the line?
Oh yes, AI is a super hot topic—and rightfully so! Personalization is in Spotify’s DNA, and we need to scale it at the speed of our listeners’ lives. You’re probably familiar with some of our personalization work through playlists like Discover Weekly or our annual Wrapped campaign. The beauty of these experiences is our ability to deliver the right piece of music for that exact moment in time—whether that’s introducing you to your new favorite artist, or resurfacing your Song of the Summer from 2016. So it felt like a natural evolution to imagine what a personal DJ would be like on Spotify—a DJ who knows you and your music tastes so well it can do the choosing for you. It scans the latest releases we know you’ll like, or takes you back to that nostalgic playlist you had on repeat last year. And, it continues to learn as you discover new music so every listening experience is fresh and exciting.
DJ is built from Spotify’s personalization technology, generative AI, and our music experts who know music and culture inside and out. For me, AI is all about scaling a better experience for our listeners so that there’s a surprise and delight in every interaction—versus scaling without prioritizing the creative quality of that experience. That’s not good enough for our listeners. So the question we ask ourselves is how can we put AI in the hands of great creators, storytellers, makers and designers of the ad industry, to scale ad experiences that surprise and delight listeners, and that at their core are human.
Beyond Cannes, what will we be doing to ensure even greater innovation, usability and performance insight for advertisers of all sizes?
The best creative work is work that works. And we want businesses both big and small to easily access creative and measurement tools. Because it doesn’t really matter how creative your idea is if no one sees it—and if it doesn’t positively impact your business. This month, we launched Spotify Ad Analytics—a measurement suite that provides the tools, free of charge, to unlock insights into your investments on streaming music and podcasts across Spotify, whether you’re looking to drive brand awareness or performance results—no matter the size of your business.
The launch builds on our acquisition of Podsights, a podcast attribution service, and upholds the promise we made to continue investing in best-in-class measurement. We’ve done that now, allowing advertisers to tap into the power of Spotify for increased precision and insights. We also have exciting plans for new creative tools coming to Spotify Ad Studio later this year—in addition to recent releases like Click goal optimization and interactive CTA cards. So be on the lookout for more updates!
And finally, what’s on your “now playing” or “repeat radar” playlists?
That’s easy. I’m leaving it up to DJ.
Stay up to date with Spotify Beach at Cannes Lion 2023 via the interactive hub at For The Record—our dedicated Spotify news site.