Spotify · In-house · August 2026
Music fans have been tearing posters from walls for decades. Spotify decided to stop treating that as vandalism and start designing for it. Its latest Fan Life posters came with perforated pieces fans could rip off, take home and, if they were lucky, discover had been signed by the artist.
Challenge
Spotify wanted to celebrate the rituals that grow around artists and live music without reducing fandom to generic cheering crowds.
The opportunity was already happening on the street. When fans love an artist enough, even the advertising can become memorabilia.
Strategy
Turn poster stealing from an unwanted consequence into the point of the campaign.
Rather than asking fans to interact in a newly invented way, Spotify worked with something they were already doing. The posters were not protected from fan behaviour. They were redesigned around it.
That made taking a piece feel less like damaging the advertising and more like completing it.
Execution
Spotify created street posters with perforated sections designed to be torn away and kept.
A handful of artist-signed pieces were hidden among them, giving fans another reason to start pulling. The featured artists included A$AP Rocky, Geese and Zara Larsson, with the wider Fan Life work drawing on highly specific styles, rituals and behaviours found inside different music communities.
The campaign turned outdoor advertising into limited-edition memorabilia. The more fans took, the more clearly the idea worked.
Campaigns That Used Similar Tactics
Authentic Ambassadors → The Devotion Amplified: Take genuine, everyday fan behaviour and elevate or exaggerate its presentation without inventing the underlying devotion.
Camera Rolls — McDonald’s, 2026
McDonald’s and Leo UK looked through real camera rolls from nights out and noticed a familiar pattern. However the evening started, the final few photographs often involved fries, takeaway bags or a late-night visit to McDonald’s. So they turned that behaviour into billboards.
Enhance a Fan Ritual → Turn Media into Memorabilia: Elevate unintended community behaviour into official design language.
Heinz Tattoo Bottle
Heinz created a limited-edition bottle with a mirrored, peelable label that tattoo artists could use as a stencil. Instead of throwing the packaging away, fans could turn one of the brand’s most recognisable assets into a permanent mark of devotion.
Kyle F*cking Connor — KFC
Winnipeg Jets supporters had already turned player Kyle Connor’s name into a recurring, slightly profane matchday celebration. The coincidence with KFC’s initials gave the brand a natural way in.
Rather than inventing a new fan behaviour, KFC adopted the phrase and helped turn it into a bigger, repeatable matchday expression. Like Spotify, it found a ritual the fans already owned and gave them more ways to enjoy it.
The Question That Could Get You There
What fan behaviour could we design into the advertising?
