Post by Richard King

Google and Netflix teamed up for the final season of Stranger Things. They created a Year in Search style video that tracks a decade of fan curiosity. Questions about the Upside Down. Theories about Vecna. Every weird thing people have googled about Hawkins since 2016. Then they built a scavenger hunt directly into Google Search. Type "Stranger Things" and you get pulled into an interactive experience with clues, character matches, and hidden Easter eggs. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. We're in what I'm calling the "Spotification" era of marketing. Every brand wants their own Wrapped moment. Duolingo does it. Apple Music does it. Strava does it. LinkedIn tried it. The playbook is simple: take user data, package it into shareable cards, hope made it interesting enough to generate a solid k coefficient for sharing to drive some virality on organic social But the execution gap is widening imo LinkedIn launched their Year in Review right when unemployment hit a four year high. Users posted screenshots showing they were "top applicants" for thousands of jobs they didn't land. From what I saw, some of the numbers were identical for people too so it missed the mark. Not exactly the feel good moment they were hoping for. And Spotify itself got backlash this year. Users complained about inaccurate data. Songs they never listened to. Artists they don't recognize. The CPO admitted publicly: "There was more negative feedback than we've seen before" My 0.02 for you: Single brand data moments are starting to feel homogenous. When everyone does a Wrapped... Nobody's Wrapped stands out. That's why I'm betting on more collabs instead. My prediction for 2026: Instead of one brand trying to own the moment alone, you combine data sets, audiences, and distribution from two brands that have a reason to work together. We're going to see a shift from single brand data playbooks to what I'd call "branded duo" campaigns. Two companies collaborating on a shared data story instead of competing for attention with their own version of the same format. Google brings the search data. Netflix brings the IP and the fanbase. Together they create something neither could do solo. The novelty of personalized data summaries is wearing off. AI companies have better access to structured data than ever, but they're still not landing with the same level of emotion that Spotify had back in 2015 when they first launched their v1 of wrapped a decade ago. So find your "right fit" creative partner. P.S. If you want to see your old Spotify Wrapped playlists type spotify:special:'year' into the search bar 👋 P.P.S. Happy New Years! What's on your playlist to wrap 2025? Lmk below!

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