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In an exclusive interview, Neha Ahuja, Head of Marketing at Spotify, talks about the motivation behind associating as a Broadcast Sponsor for TATA IPL 2022 and driving a connect with young Indians in a country where music is a culture.

TATA IPL has returned to home soil and the excitement is through the roof. What are your thoughts about the mega event as a brand as well as a viewer?

Super excited, both as a marketer and as a viewer. From a consumer perspective, just the fact that there are 2 new teams this time around and a lot of player shuffles amongst teams makes it interesting for all the fans. To add to the energy, the fact that we can see fans cheering from stands makes it even better.

From a brand perspective- Any national brand, especially in a leadership position needs scale and sustenance. And IPL gives us that. We believe that the IPL this year will offer a great opportunity to connect with young Indians and further drive awareness and consideration for our brand proposition.

IPL has been an integral part of Spotify Indias brand-building efforts. While youve been an advertiser on IPL on TV in previous editions, this year youve come onboard as a Broadcast Sponsor on Star Sports. Can you tell us about the motivation behind this association on TV and the key objectives you aim to achieve through this?

Being the associate sponsor for IPL 2022, our campaign will be about driving relevance of Music in our lives. The platform and the format give the brand an opportunity to integrate it into their lifestyle.

Spotify completed 3 years in India. We want it to be the platform of choice for music consumption for every single individual in the country.

What role does advertising on television play for a digital native brand like Spotify?

TV has always been an integral part of our marketing plans. While we are a digital native brand and digital marketing is an important part of our media mix, TV has always played the role of primary reach builder for us.

We strongly believe that music as a category is not just restricted to the digital natives but is a part of the culture of this country and hence relevant for everyone.

Can you give us your insight into this years TV campaign weve all got to see during the TATA IPL?

The insight for this year's campaign is simple yet powerful. We believe that music is a grease, and it helps us navigate through difficult, crummy situations. Playing to our strength of a wide selection of over 8 crore songs, the brand highlights how any situation can be made better when looked through the lens of Music. It's a deeply relatable insight highlighting how music has become a vital part of Indias daily social fabric, where people use it as a strong medium to soundtrack their life.

Watch the TVC here:

Many online brands have leveraged IPL on TV to shape consumer behavior and adoption across multiple seasons. Will we see Spotify leverage this association in similar interesting ways?

The choice of being present on IPL as an associate sponsor this time around was a strategic one - We wanted to expand our reach and speak to a larger audience through this campaign and hence IPL was the default choice for this. The presence of future IPLs would again be dependent on our strategic objectives at that time.

With the largest aggregation of audiences on television, IPL is compared to Super Bowl in terms of creative advertising through TVCs. Can you tell us your thoughts about creative advertising on broadcast through a mega event like IPL and how it helps Spotify build recall and shape perceptions?

IPL is indeed becoming like the Super Bowl of India in terms of scale and cuts across consumer segments. Unlike Super Bowl, IPL is a 9-week property which gives brands an opportunity to tell the brand story. We have showcased different everyday situations of India where music helps ease some of the mundane, but inevitable circumstances.

TATA IPL is setting new benchmarks in brand associations, giving leading national brands like Spotify a powerful and incomparable platform to intensify their reach and viewer engagements.

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IPL gives any national brand the scale and sustenance it needs: Neha Ahuja, Spotify - Exchange4Media