Spotify, Nintendo, SNCF... How can we explain the crazy success of “retrospectives”?

In the space of a few days, you learned that your colleague was an unconfessed Taylor Swift fan (6,254 minutes of listening over the past year) and that your eldest daughter had traveled exactly 94,936 km by TGV in 2023, the equivalent of... 2250 marathons. You owe this extremely important information to the famous “retrospectives” which have literally invaded social networks in recent weeks. Spotify, Apple, Nintendo, Duolingo... We can no longer count the companies that have made these personalized recaps an essential event of the holiday season. Even our national SNCF got involved for the second year in a row.

Whatever the application, the principle is always more or less the same: as December 31 approaches, these companies send, through their application, a “recap” which sifts through the user's habits over the course of the last year. There is no question of overwhelming the customer with blocks of raw data and barbaric graphs: this individualized report is delivered in the form of a story, accompanied by fun and interactive visuals. Colorful content ready to invade our Facebook or Instagram news feeds.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not Spotify that we owe the invention of this outstanding marketing stunt. Since the early 2010s, “recaps” have been offered by the book rating site Goodreads. But it is indeed the music giant who brought the art of the retrospective to its peak. Since 2015, the music streaming platform has compiled, analyzed and edited the “soundtracks of the year” from its 551 million users. Thanks to this “time capsule”, Spotify subscribers discover the time they spent listening to music, what are their favorite artists and titles, or even their favorite musical genre. Relatively confidential in its beginnings, the so-called “Spotify Wrapped” quickly became viral, driven by the rise of social networks.

In recent years, we can even speak of euphoria: on the day of its publication, millions of users rush to publish the results of their “Wrapped” on social networks. In 2021, more than 120 million users had opened their retrospective, and almost half of them had shared it in stories on different networks, according to Spotify data transmitted to Time. This year, the streaming giant pulled out all the stops. In addition to integrating a new feature (an intimate message from the most listened to artist), the retrospective was the subject of a huge advertising campaign around the world. In the United Kingdom, the “virtual” event even doubled as a launch concert bringing together some of the biggest stars of world music. Enough to delight the platform's subscribers, and enthuse its employees. In the columns of the Times, an American employee even goes so far as to compare the excitement preceding the publication of the retrospective to that of “election night”.

No wonder the idea ended up inspiring all the entertainment giants. Following on the heels of Spotify, Apple Music launched its own “Replay” retrospective in 2019, closely followed by Deezer. The video game sector has also gotten into it, with PlayStation and Nintendo in the lead. The language learning application Duolingo wanted to imitate them, and now informs its users on the number of words learned during the year. “You have read 421 articles in 2023”, thank Les Échos in their first subscriber “recap”. But the prize for the most original retrospective undoubtedly goes to the SNCF, which, with its “Retrainspective”, congratulates travelers for their number of kilometers traveled by train over the last 12 months.

Rewarding, attractive and often fun, retrospectives are fun. But what do they really bring to businesses? “Retrospectives are very interesting for brands,” begins Élodie Getina, professor of marketing at IESEG. “Offering this type of personalized capsule allows you to improve your image with the customer and increase their loyalty.” When contacted, SNCF did not say anything else: “With this personalized assessment we wish to provide a pleasant and rewarding experience to strengthen the bond with our 14 million customers,” explains the company. Thanks to massive sharing on social networks, “Wrapped” also constitute “free advertising” for companies, and sometimes the opportunity to remind people of “the quantity-price” of the service offered. “Learning that for around ten euros per month, your friends benefit from more than 1000 hours of musical listening, it’s the most convincing advertising that one can imagine,” remarks the specialist.

Still, it’s not all a question of price and advertising. The strength of these “recaps” lies in their “emotional” or “nostalgic” character. “This is what we call emotion marketing, which consists of creating emotion around the products marketed,” explains Élodie Getina. Through their personal dimension, retrospectives have the gift of “bringing together use and memories and thus transforming consumption into an intimate story”. Intimacy that we are nevertheless quick to share with others... “This is the tour de force of retrospectives: establishing individual habits into collective experiences,” continues the specialist. Whether you are one of Miley Cyrus' biggest global fans or the most ardent SNCF travelers, the satisfaction remains the same: belonging to a group, if not to an elite. “Just read the closing words of the SNCF retrospective: thank you for belonging to Team Train. This kind of message responds to both the desire for social validation and the need we all have to feel special,” analyzes the professor.

As for whether the vein could be infinitely different, the marketing expert is more skeptical. “In theory, any company could offer retrospectives, but you still need to have positive values ​​to convey.” For streaming platforms, the equation is clear: a year full of listening demonstrates an interest in culture and an eclectic personality. For the SNCF, it is even more obvious: the thousands of kilometers traveled by train are as much CO2 as the user will have helped to avoid. “The goal is to reassure the user about their values,” assures Élodie Gétina. And it seems to be working: the “Rétrainspective” has been shared more than 37,000 times in 2023. “On the day of release, the hashtag was a trending topic on X with 1 mention per minute,” says the SNCF. “Young people, in particular, like to promote their responsible consumption,” notes Elodie Gétina. Enough to put polluting industries, like fast fashion, out of the game, but also services that don't really stand out for their ethics: it's hard to imagine UberEat reminding us of all the times we didn't have the strength to get up our sofa...

Whether ethical or not, retrospectives do not appeal to all users, far from it. Some criticize them for being nothing more than an intrusive aggregation of personal data, like this journalist from the Guardian, who published a fiery column against “Spotify Wrapped” in November. “It’s scary, meaningless, and it just shows the amount of data that the tech giants collect on us,” storms Alexis Petridis. Enough to sow doubt: what if these charming time capsules were only the playful and attractive side of our contemporary Big Brother?