Spotify + Tiffany&Co — a brand mashup case study
A design concept for an unlikely collaboration.
Part of my New Years Resolution was to rectify my relationship with my creativity. While reflecting on 2019, I realized I’d been taking ~designing~ too seriously. Don’t get me wrong; I care about my designs with all my heart. But I was so obsessed with retrofitting the story of my mockups into the rubric for the perfect UX process. I was sucking the authenticity and the fun out of design for me. So in 2020, I’m taking my creativity out of its cage and giving it a Four Loko, designing a bit more haphazardly and always with a smile.
“I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.’”
-Elizabeth Gilbert
I was going through my project purgatory — where design ideas go to indefinitely rest — when I remembered a random concept from school. About a year ago, I was taking a class on branding and design. As a warm-up, we’d play a game called Brand Mashup. We had two hats filled with slips of paper. In one hat, the slips had established, older companies; in the other, the slips had modern, tech companies. After you pick one slip from each hat, you have 60 seconds to come up with a one-sentence design concept for a collaboration between the two brands. Some, like Ikea and Lyft or Tesla and Nike, made a lot of sense. Others, like Wendy’s and Warby Parker or Apple and Bounty, weren’t as straight forward. I drew Spotify and Tiffany & Co. and immediately started fantasizing about what these two iconic brands could do if they brought their powers together. My initial concept after 60 seconds was “Spotify Platinum: collectible jewelry with NFC chips embedded that allow exclusive artist content.” Now, a year later, I want to see what this one-liner would look like fleshed out.
So 365 days later…
I started immersing myself in the brand language and company history of both Spotify and Tiffany. After discovering and doting on Spotify’s Creative Directors’ portfolios for a couple of hours (Tal Midyan’s is my favorite), I confirmed what I already knew about Spotify — this is a company that pushes the limit and redefines what it means to experience music. Stan culture — a fan who goes to great lengths to obsess over a celebrity — has increased the importance of more holistic experiences that artists make for their bodies of work.
Spotify has not shied away from letting users experience music in an immersive way, letting artists curate a universe for their music. In March, Spotify unveiled the Billie Eilish experience where fans could experience her latest album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO. Billie’s synesthesia leaped out of her head and into physical space. I love Spotify’s bold take on everything, so wanted to lean into this idea. How can we give stans access to exclusive artist content and allow artists to give more immersive experiences?
Tiffany, on the other hand, has a millennial problem. The jewelry company has been struggling to attract the young aesthetes who’d rather stunt Off-White hazmat suits or Balenciaga Crocs than anything that comes in a light blue box. Media outlets have reported that on top of choosing avocado toast over a mortgage, millennials are killing the diamond industry. It has to do with woke culture, which has called out the sinister diamond industry. Tiffany has been around for almost two centuries though and has maintained its elitist and gaudy aesthetic. It may be a refreshing change for them to collaborate with Spotify.
How are these opposing brands going to coalesce? My concept is Spotify Platinum. Platinum allows user to unlock exclusive content by linking Tiffany & Co. jewelry with their Spotify account. Additionally, artists have the opportunity to design their accessories with Tiffany.
Here’s where the fun happens
I designed a new Platinum tab in the bottom tab navigation. This is where the Premium tab lives for Spotify Free users, so I placed Platinum there to parallel the upgrade interaction. After a user gets their Tiffany accessory, they can add it to their account. The accessories would have an NFC chip embedded within it for authenticity. When a user decides to add a new Tiffany accessory for the first time, they’ll recognize a familiar screen. I decided to mimic the Apple Pay screen so users know that the jewelry’s NFC chip works the same way.
After the user begins to buy more Tiffany products, it’ll build their “charm box.” Here they can take a quick peak at the exclusive content they get with their accessory. When under the event tab, users can see what exclusive events artists are hosting for devoted fans. A potential opportunity would be for Tiffany to also partner with Ticketmaster so the jewelry can act as a ticket for the event. Instead of downloading or printing a ticket, have security scan your Platinum accessory. Finally, there is a merch tab for artists to sell exclusive items!
Users can also buy new charms straight from the app. Before buying, users can preview the kind of content they can see that the artist shares on Platinum. Beyoncé, in this example, shows two events and two pieces of merch that are exclusive to Platinum fans. Now that they can see the advantage of having the account, users may be more likely to upgrade.
Okay, but what about the marketing?
One of the qualities I admire about Spotify is the voice and tone of the brand. We all remember the chaos that was 2016, right? At the end of that year, I remember thinking “wtf.” Spotify leaned into this for their biggest global ad campaign: Thanks 2016, it’s been weird. In which, the brand underscored how everything from the burgeoning success of Hamilton to the unexpected results of Brexit (and other elections 😬) were influencing the songs people were playing. I wanted to imitate this playful language in the Spotify x Tiffany advertisement concepts.
I wanted the ads to be more consistent with Spotify graphics, but use colors from both of the brands. I love how the Tiffany blue and Spotify green juxtapose. Also, 7 rings was the soundtrack of my life a year ago, so I had to give it a shoutout.
I also wanted to test out what the ads would look like in completely different settings: large digital display, traditional advertisement print, and wheat paste poster.
One of the primary opportunities that stood out for me after writing through this article was the opportunity for smaller, indie artists to make money through the Spotify platform. It’s no secret that artists’ value has decreased concurrently as streaming adoption has increased. It would be an amazing opportunity for smaller artists to be able to create “Platinum” content for their small, yet cult-like following. I’m not sure what that would look like since there are 1.2 million artists on Spotify (as of the end of 2019), but an opportunity I’d want to further consider.
To fit in this vision of the collaboration, Tiffany would have to redefine itself to become more inclusive. Spotify prides itself on its accessibility. The narrative they present is “Spotify is for everyone.” Are you a student? We have a plan for you. Are you a business? We’ve got a plan for you too. Are you an artist? We have something for you as well. Tiffany would have to lean into that mentality for this mashup to work.
All in all, I’m glad I gave this project a breath of life, and I’m excited to bring more designs into the light in this decade 😊.
