Israeli NGO Hacks Spotify to Make a Point

Ten years after its official launch, and after it has gradually conquered a big part of Europe, the Americas, and Asia, the time has come for the world’s largest streaming service, Spotify, to please listeners’ ears from four new states. Starting March 12, music enthusiasts from Vietnam, South Africa, Romania, and Israel can listen to millions of songs, whether local or international. Only that, in Israel, Spotify’s launch was accompanied by a small audio surprise, courtesy of Bekol, Israel’s Organization for the Hard of Hearing.

Surprisingly, the gift hadn’t come as a brainchild of the NGO in partnership with the streaming platform. In fact, Spotify was just used as Bekol and BBR Saatchi & Saatchi’s playground, which took advantage of the brand’s domain only to deliver a kind message. According to the nonprofit organization, teenagers and youngsters prefer listening to music at increasingly high volumes, which means that the average age for developing a hearing problem is dropping quite rapidly.

To make young people pay more attention to their auditory system, the agency created “Hacking Spotify,” an initiative that allowed Bekol speak directly to young adults. Aware of the fact that millennials use Google to reach Spotify, the Tel Aviv-based agency cheekily created a new domain with a similar name. Then, using Google AdWords, the creatives boosted the new site within the search engine. A simple combination of the keyword “Spotify” in the search box brought up Bekol’s ‘fake’ webpage, spotify.org.il, and not Spotify’s, which is sporify.com/il/.

The trap link sent users to a page similar to the one provided by the streaming giant, only that it welcomed users with a message they probably didn’t expect: “Spotify is now available in Israel, but not for the thousands of hard of hearing. Playing music too loudly means many youngsters are finding out they may need a hearing aid by the age of 40. Bekol, Israel’s Organization for the Hard of Hearing, is here to help prevent that and you can help.”

Visible for only 30 seconds, users had plenty of time to find out more about the NGO or make a donation. Eventually, the clone site of the streaming company redirected users to the real webpage.

Spotify’s stepsister site paid off: in just a week after the launch, the number of users accessing Bekol’s site had increased by 65% and donations had grown by 200%. “Hacking Spotify paid off as we managed to get up close and personal with the internet’s hardest to reach demographic and confront them with a message which they may not want to hear but may not be able to in the near future,” the team behind the project claims in a press release. Not a bad effort!

This isn’t the first time when BBR Saatchi & Saatchi ‘hacked’ a website. In 2017, the agency created an online ad based on Youtube’s ‘skip ad’ function. Designed for Israeli charity Latet and just in time for the Jewish New Year, the team put together a series of pre-roll ads and set them to play on the website’s videos. The viewers who skipped them were served with an unusual message. Watch the video below and find out for yourself what was hidden behind these clever ads.