Pandora Launches $20M Brand Marketing Campaign

On the heels of a new offering for advertisers—uninterrupted sponsored listening—Pandora Media Monday launched what it considers its biggest, boldest consumer brand campaign in its nearly 10 years of existence, according to Forbes.

Highlighting the Music Genome Project—the many musicologists, curators and data scientists—behind Pandora’s music and thus the highly customized listening experience the company delivers to its nearly 80 million users, the multichannel campaign is meant to further separate the leading streaming-music service from bold competitors like iHeartRadio and Spotify and newer entrant Apple Music.

The company’s bigger investment in brand marketing is the result of what it claims is its financial ability but also an acknowledgement that at 10 years old next month, it needs to continually work to attract an ever-younger generation. “Keeping the brand fresh is critical,” said CMO Simon Fleming-Wood, adding that the campaign comes at the “intersection of necessity and opportunity. The fight for the future of music is now. We happen to start from a strong leadership position. We feel great about where the audience is and where the brand is, but the landscape has evolved to where the players aren’t startups; they are extremely well-funded and aggressive,” he said.