Gatorade and Spotify approached, Hydric Media to create a branded experience that would deliver personalized, insight-driven music recommendations to soundtrack user workouts. Hydric were responsible for the initial ideation and R&D, validating the concept was technically feasible while collaborating with VML who produced the visual design and other campaign collateral.
My role on the project saw me wireframing the user experience based on a client approved user-flow for connecting their account, fine-tuning workout settings and receiving a workout playlist. I also worked closely with engineering at Hydric Media to ensure what we delivered was of exceptional build quality to Gatorade and Spotify for release.
Challenges
The Spotify API is an excellent resource for user listening data. As a team, we had to create an experience that would not only recommend music the user would like, but it also had to combine it with desired workout settings (such as intervals, duration, and intensity), to produce a playlist primed for making users move and sweat.
Above: final designs for interval training mode and resulting playlist.
Solutions
This saw us combine Spotify’s recommendation engine to match the duration of a high-intensity exercise with crossfading to help the user seamlessly move from one interval to the next. We also took advantage of Hydric Media's proprietary playlist optimisation platform, Lineup to ensure each user-generated workout playlist would automatically refresh with new music each week, so they never got tired of it.
Gatorade Amplify was launched as a centerpiece in a nation-wide digital campaign in the US, featuring in Spotify ads managed by Omnicom, as well as special music supervision provided by Steve Aoki and his Dim Mak label.
The results of this collaboration, lead to over 60k playlists being generated (5x higher than Spotify benchmarks) and over 1.4 million minutes of combined listening (2x Spotify benchmarks), all within the first three months.
Details
Client(s) — Gatorade & Spotify
Agency — Hydric Media
Platform — Web
Role — Product Lead
Featured in
Awards
2017 Clio — Silver (Sports), Short List (Music)
2017 Cannes Lions — Short List
2017 Cannes Lions — Short List
