Best Song Penne: Barilla Launches Playlist Timers
Published on April 5, 2021 at 5:45 p.m.
by Bella Valentini.
For many people, cooking is a form of relaxation, allowing them to wind down at the end of a long work day. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants to shut their doors indefinitely last March, many people — even those who had never cooked before — turned to making home cooked meals.
Barilla launched several Playlist Timers on Spotify through a campaign started by Publicis Italia, creating an innovative way to help consumers cook their pasta perfectly while still having the chance to listen to music and stay entertained while cooking.
The eight playlists offered are “Mixtape Spaghetti,” “Boom Bap Fusilli,” “Moody Day Linguine,” “Pleasant Melancholy Penne,” “Best Song Penne,” “Top Hits Spaghetti,” “Timeless Emotion Fusilli” and “Simply Classic Linguine.” Each playlist features popular songs in Italy, as well as songs that Barilla’s American consumers are familiar with. The cover art for the playlists was also created by various Italian artists, incorporating the pasta shape that each playlist is named after, as well as including Barilla’s trademark shades of red, yellow and blue.
Though this campaign may seem unimportant when it comes to public relations, Barilla can actually use it to keep consumers engaged through a branded experience, especially since more people are cooking at home due to the pandemic. While Barilla is not the first food brand to partner up with Spotify, these types of collaborations can help a brand that makes something as average as pasta stand out among competitors, assisting consumers in differentiating the brand from others.
Besides driving Barilla’s consumer engagement up, this campaign can also help to draw attention to the artists whose work is featured on the playlist covers, and even introduce consumers to new artists and genres of music within the playlists.
Barilla’s launch of Playlist Timers — with the help of Spotify — showcases how the brand closely monitors its consumers, offering fresh, innovative ways to keep them engaged, even through a global pandemic.
