MAM
Spotify launches year-end marketing campaign ‘Well Played India’
MUMBAI: Nearly 10 days ago, Spotify announced the local version of its very popular, global Wrapped campaign, where app users across countries could see the top artists, tracks, albums, and more that they listened to on the platform. To amplify the impact of this consumer engaging campaign, Spotify is now running ‘Well Played India’, a marketing campaign across TV, outdoor, and digital, to celebrate how Indians listened to music through 2019. The essence of this campaign is to highlight the biggest music streaming trends across the country, based on cultural and seasonal moments of listening.
What differentiates this campaign from Spotify’s previous marketing campaigns here is that ‘Well Played India’ at its core, is powered by data, and an ode to India’s growing passion for music, transitioning from a recreational experience, to a more integral part of the daily social fabric across user moods and moments. The localised theme of the campaign is designed to build relevance with the local users, who have not experienced Spotify Wrapped, but have been listening to music and podcasts on Spotify since its launch in India earlier this year. So far, over 100 artists, and more than 11,000 users have shared their Wrapped cards on social media, with the maximum search volume for #SpotifyWrapped coming from Goa, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Delhi and Karnataka. Beyond users and artists, brands and influencers also joined in the Wrapped fun – right from Netflix and BuzzFeed India, to Boscia and Akshar Pathak.
‘‘Spotify Wrapped is unlike any other campaign, and is designed to celebrate the user’s intimate relationship with music. Born through data and powered by the user’s innate passion to explore music, the campaign at its core reflects our value in audio discovery and how we are bringing alive newer music journeys and sounds everyday. “Well played” is a commonly used phrase between friends and family in conversations, and we used it to create relatability to what the Wrapped campaign stands for. Right from users to artists, we’ve seen the sharing of Wrapped cards kick off, and hope that this campaign drives more consumption and sharing,” said Spotify India marketing head Neha Ahuja.
The ‘Well Played India’ campaign specifically highlights four key moments of the year and what Spotify users listened to the most, during these moments. Right from ‘Diwali cooking’ to ‘post Diwali workout’, and from the ‘wedding season’ to the ‘traffic’ season that comes along with the weddings, the brand campaign depicts how every situation was accompanied by music.
The campaign features two TVCs, 25 digital creatives across online and social media platforms, and 15 OOH creatives highlighting culturally relevant audio trends, through the end of the year.
For the entire Wrapped experience, Spotify users can navigate to spotify.com/wrapped for an eye-catching visualization of their 2019 year in music.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
