The song is the campaign, and the audiences are the the ones writing them

For years, music in advertising played a supporting role: a jingle, or a famous track placed under a TV spot to make it more memorable. That’s changed. Brands now build entire campaigns, experiences and communities around music, and in some cases the song becomes more famous than the ad. The most interesting examples don’t just borrow music to sell something. They give people a reason to take part, share it and make it their own.

• Spotify Wrapped turned data capture into a cultural moment. Data collection should be the dullest part of a brand relationship, but Spotify has made it an event that 700 million+ listeners look forward to every December. People post their results to Instagram stories and send them to friends, not because they love Spotify’s advertising but because music taste is personal and Wrapped turns it into a shareable piece of identity.

• Jet2holidays showed what happens when the audience takes over the ad. Jess Glynne’s Hold My Hand had been on Jet2 ads for years before it became a TikTok trend in 2025, with people using the sound to tell their own holiday stories. It went on to 80 billion views and millions of videos, from Jeff Goldblum to countless influencers, and TikTok named it its global song of the summer. The joke was often at the brand’s expense, but Jet2 reported increased awareness and demand. Sometimes the most powerful brand asset is the one consumers make their own.

• Coke Studio shows a brand moving from sponsoring culture to creating it. Rather than putting its logo on someone else’s moment, Coca-Cola built a branded music platform that brings artists from different countries, genres and backgrounds together to make original music. It works like a recording studio, with the logo built naturally into the space, so Coke is helping to make the entertainment itself.

• Music works for brands because it does three things few other assets can. It creates instant emotion and memory, it connects people to communities and cultures, and it can be repeated endlessly. People will play the same song again and again, then share it and reinterpret it, in a way they would never do with a standard ad.

• Authenticity decides whether it lands. Audiences can tell straight away when a brand has dropped a popular song onto an ad with no real connection to it. The brands that get it right are adding something meaningful, making cultural sense and supporting artists and communities rather than just borrowing from them.

• The test is simple: would people still care without the logo? Wrapped, the Jet2 trend and Coke Studio all pass, because the experience is worth having in its own right. That’s what separates music as marketing from music in marketing.
  
  

  The takeaway for Paradise: think beyond individual deliverables to bigger campaign platforms, such as episodic content or live streams, that can run across activations and get more value from every campaign investment. Then connect that cultural impact back to commercial objectives like sign-ups and the buzz around a campaign, so clients see music as a strategy, not a soundtrack.