He was in Virginia, working as a TV reporter as a hurricane was due to sweep in, and Seth Farbman’s role was to cut into the broadcast every fifteen minutes or so with an update. There was just one problem: the hurricane wasn’t coming.
“There was no news. I had to stand there in my very dry raincoat and find the one little tree that was blowing a little bit – I think maybe we had a string on it and were pulling it – and tell people that the world is about to end,” Farbman, CMO at Spotify, recalled during a recent interview with the business school at the University of Notre Dame.
Back in the truck, a colleague consoled him. “She said, ‘Never question the value of what we’re doing, because if it wasn’t for us, all the commercials would just bag together. At that point, I thought, well why the hell don’t I make the commercials then?”
At Spotify, Farbman does a lot more than oversee TV commercials, of course, but don’t assume the digital nature of the streaming music service makes him a slave to analytics. In fact, Farbman said “much of what we’re measuring in digital is quite suspect” and urged other marketers to focus primarily on data that allows you to specifically understand what people want and need in ways that they may not even understand themselves.
“We’ve used massive data to really understand the relationship people have with music. The way people listen to it in their lives is very telling and very meaningful,” he said. “But then you apply creativity, which we cannot underestimate. We cannot look at the data and say creativity is secondary.”
A while back, for example, Farbman and his team began looking at the playlists of some Spotify customers. Not just at the songs in the playlists, but how those playlists were named. They started to see a number that were named something like, “Play this at my funeral,” he said.
“Talk about control freaks . . . They want to soundtrack their own life even when it’s over!” Farbman said, laughing. The team observed Green Day was prominently on such playlists, which led to a discussion about reaching out to the band’s lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, to appear in a commercial that cut to mourners dancing to his music. “The data can provide this very weird, unusual narrative that you can use to create a very compelling, funny story.”
What’s ultimately important, Farbman said, was brands spend more time cultivating empathy towards their customers, rather than think about how they could manipulate or persuade them to buy something.
“There’s this old saying in marketing that you want to create brand love. I actually think the first thing we need to do as marketers is reduce anxiety and fear – really take the time to figure out how you can be useful,” he said. “When you’re giving something to somebody that fundamentally makes their lives better, you don’t have to worry about the transaction. The growth will come automatically.”
The full hour-long interview with Farbman is available below.
