MAM
Spotify’s Sunte Ja hits the high note with Indian consumers
MUMBAI: Spotify India’s first multi-lingual national TV-led campaign ‘Sunte Ja’ has struck a chord with consumers in the country with its strategic media mix of TV, OOH and Digital. This campaign follows Spotify’s first geo-localised and hyper-contextualised marketing campaign ‘There’s A Playlist For That’. Featuring Bollywood actors Anil Kapoor and Ishaan Khattar, the current campaign is built on the insight that music is in the social fabric of all we do – right from daily experiences to special moments.
The campaign’s creative digital activations generated 3 billion impressions, and digital amplification of the TVC and native films have garnered 350+ million views since its launch.
As a part of the campaign, a total of 4 TVCs in Hindi, Telugu, and Marathi, aired across 75+ GEC, movies and English cluster channels, as well as a few regional ones.
To get people talking (and streaming) even more, Spotify launched an artist-led OOH campaign where names of popular tracks were synchronised to create quirky one liners that appeal to the audience’s emotions and sentiments. The 100+ OOH billboards also featured artists who sang those tracks, including Amit Trivedi, Badshah, Armaan Malik, Diljit Dosanjh, Vishal & Shekhar, Sunidhi Chauhan, Nucleya, Shanker Ehsan Loy, Salim Sulaiman, Jonita Gandhi, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Kate Perry, Alan Walker and Shawn Mendes. Recognising key factors such as visibility, a larger creative canvas, being less intrusive, and an effective capture of off-screen time, Spotify used OOH as a pivotal media for ATL communication as part of its larger media strategy across metros and regional markets.
In addition to TV, the ‘Sunte Ja’ campaign also leveraged digital channels to integrate Spotify’s value proposition of its wide music library, on social media. Spotify took Antakshari, a game so culturally ingrained in India and gave it a modern-day twist, garnering 8100 engagements and reaching 4.1 million people. Spotify also released six digital films – Chill Karo, Bae, Calm Down, Happy To Be Home, Bollywood Mush and Focus Now – that visually represent everyday millennial struggles and music as the background score in those situations. Viewed over 3.5 million times, the films resonated well with the audience.
The TV ads were also amplified across digital platforms – Slow Breakfast, What’s in the Age, What’s the score? and ‘K’ Pops, which highlighted that users have access to the latest music and uninterrupted background play. In fact, K-Pops, a film created for India’s K-Pop community used ‘Boy with Luv’ by BTS as the soundtrack, led to unprecedented engagement. #AnilKapoor trended in India for his “cool dad” role in the film, resulting in the BTS Army accepting him as one of their own. The film crossed over 1 million views on social media in just 12 hours and received 63k engagements– comparable to Bollywood film trailers in the same time period.
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
