About the Author
Eilidh Dunsire
Resident brand strategist, designer, creative solution finder & ice cream appreciator.
It’s December which means it’s time for e̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶h̶o̶c̶o̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶b̶r̶e̶a̶k̶f̶a̶s̶t̶ reflecting on the past year and mentally preparing ourselves for writing ‘2023’ in our diary.
It seems like 'wrapped season’ has become a global event, I’m not sure if Spotify started the trend that has our favorite products telling us about how we spent our year, but their version definitely gets us talking the most.
From a design, digital experience and branding perspective, I find the concept is super interesting, so I'm taking a deeper dive into it for this months' post.
What is ‘wrapped’?
Wrapped is an experience presented (usually) within the app, which summarises your data, trends and content consumption from the past year, while also comparing where your habits sit in the global community.
1 part cultural brand campaign, and
1 part personalized digital experience
Wrapped (and similar review experiences) aim to create conversations and give back to the end user while also acting as a brand campaign for the company.
Everybody loves data!
There’s something fascinating about knowing the stats of our behaviour and how it compares to others around us, and globally.
Mosts services that present a wrapped type experience include a personalised, sharable card that you can post, or compare with friends and family. The sharing has a snowball effect, once someone shares their insights, you naturally want to compare yours. Which is a win win: more shares and more people using the product is good for Spotify. Plus it's fun, and a little extra value for the end user.
The experience - branded
Each year, Spotify creates a whole visual style for their wrapped campaign. The visuals stand out in a unique way, and once you have seen it once, it is super recognisable.
An interesting challenge that Spotify tackled successfully this year is making sure the wrapped banner stands out to us while scrolling the app.
It has to look different from album art, podcast art and their own generated cover art for playlists. So different in fact, that it makes you stop and look. So the wrapped brand by default has to be different from Spotify’s brand and in app experience, which you might think would cause a clash.
The geometric, mirrored shapes and bold colours the define this years' look hit that mark of standing out really well. And, it still feels like it belongs to Spotify.
Here are some interesting articles from the super creative people that put together wrapped and other year in review campaigns:
How Spotify’s Wrapped campaign for 2022 came together - on It’s nice that
Duolingo Year-in-Review - on Duolingo.com
Reddit Recap - Reddit (product)
Reddit Recap - Reddit (global)
Sainsburys what the nation ate - Sainsbury's 2021