Pandora Launches Ad Campaign

Pandora today launched a big new ad campaign heralding, in part, the launch of Pandora Premium, its long-awaited foray into on-demand music streaming. But the campaign goes beyond hyping Premium to emphasize the brand’s larger commitment to delivering a more personalized music-streaming experience, which Pandora has long seen as its real point of difference.

According to AdWeek, the digital and out-of-home campaign was created in-house, with some production and media strategy handled by DigitasLBi in San Francisco.

“It’s a big year for Pandora,” CMO Nick Bartle, who joined the company last fall from Apple, told Adweek. “We’re really excited about the launch of our Premium product. But this is really about reintroducing the entire company and driving interest with all three tiers of our service [including the ad-supported offering and Pandora Plus].”

The centerpiece of the new campaign is a series of 18 portraits that pair musicians, mirror-like, with a large letter P made up of the covers of albums that influenced them. The ads feature the line “Sounds Like…” along with the artist’s name, followed by the new tagline, “Sounds Like You.”


The letter P, referred to internally at Pandora as “the fat P,” was introduced last October as the new logo, part of a larger brand overhaul. The P has taken many forms, colors and patterns, and Bartle said he sees similar flexibility in the “Sounds Like…” line.