Spotify’s Bridget Evans on How Brands Can (and Should) Tap Into the Fan Experience

Last week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Spotify Beach brought fans, creators, and brands together for three days of conversation focused on culture and fandom.

Our daytime sessions kicked off with Building What Money Can’t Buy: New Rules of Brand Loyalty, a conversation featuring Coach CMO Joon Silverstein, artist Troye Sivan, Cosmopolitan and Seventeen Editor-in-Chief Willa Bennett, and Spotify’s Global Head of Business Marketing, Bridget Evans. Together, they explored how fashion, music, and identity intertwine to spark cultural connection.

During the session, Joon revealed that this fall, Spotify and Coach will be teaming up for an exciting new global cultural partnership. 

“This is much more than a traditional brand collaboration,” said Joon. “It’s a cultural partnership built around self-expression, connection, and community. One of the biggest things we’ve learned about Gen Z is that what they wear, what they listen to, and the communities they belong to are all part of the same personal story. That’s what makes this partnership feel so natural. At Coach, self-expression lives in style. At Spotify, it lives in music. And what we’re building together goes beyond both.” 

For the Record sat down with Bridget after the festival to talk about the new partnership, how brands can tap into fandom, and the secret to connecting with Gen Z.

Spotify Beach has become adestination during Cannes. What is the team trying to create there?

We want it to feel like Spotify in real life. People come to the platform with intention, they discover things that surprise them, they connect with artists and ideas they didn’t know they needed, and they feel something. We want Spotify Beach to do the same thing.  

What made Coach the right partner for this moment, and what does this partnership say about the kind of relationships Spotify wants to build with brands?

Gen Z is craving connection, and both of our brands have earned a place in their lives. Coach does that through how consumers express themselves and how the brand shapes their identity. On the Spotify side, we’re an essential daily companion. Music is a catalyst for real connection, on and offline. 

So when we looked at what Joon and her team have built, it just made sense. We’re excited to bring our flavors of fashion and music together in a way that feels real. That’s the kind of partnership we want to build more of. It’s not a media buy or a logo placement. Instead, both brands actually have something to contribute to the fan. 

From your perspective, what’s changed the most in how brands need to show up now?

There was a time when showing up with a big enough activation meant something. Now, you can’t buy your way into culture. People see through that pretty quickly, and it’s become more competitive than ever. And brands that haven’t caught up to that reality show up at Cannes and wonder why their message isn’t landing, whereas the ones who’ve figured it out are building real relationships. 

You’ve made a distinction between sponsoring culture and participating in it. What’s the difference, and why does that matter?

Traditional sponsorship is transactional. You pay to be there, you get your logo placement, and then it’s over. Participation is something different. It means you actually have something to contribute to the experience. The fans know when a brand is just renting space versus when it’s really adding something. Gen Z especially. 

When we talk to partners about what’s possible on Spotify, we’re really asking is: What do you actually have to offer fans? Not just, What do you want to say to them? The work that comes out of that question is almost always more interesting, and it tends to drive better results, too.  

You’ve described Spotify as the soundtrack to people’s lives, both in big moments and ordinary ones. Why is that so powerful for brands trying to connect with Gen Z?

Because the ordinary moments are actually where identity gets formed. Your commute, the late night wind-down, a workout—those are times when you’re alone with what you love, and Spotify is there for all of it. For Gen Z especially, that depth of relationship builds real affinity. Our research is pretty clear that they feel like Spotify gets them. That kind of trust is rare. 

AUX, Spotify’s in-house music consultancy for brands, seems to signal a new model for brand partnerships. How would you describe it to someone who hasn’t followed the evolution of the work?

We draw on over a decade of editorial expertise, data, and artist relationships to help brands figure out how music can be incorporated into their marketing strategy. And it goes well beyond placement. It’s about connecting brands with artists and fans inside cultural moments that already have real energy. 

Think of NBC Peacock around NBA All-Star with RapCaviar, or Hilton sponsoring Spotify’s annual Best New Artists celebration. LinkedIn and John Summit threw a surprise corporate rave to celebrate his sophomore album. At CMA Fest, Mountain Dew brought Fresh Finds Country to life with a live rooftop show featuring emerging artists.

Each of those is a brand showing up as a participant rather than a sponsor. The Coach partnership we announced at Cannes is the most ambitious version of that yet.

If a brand wants to build “fandom,” what does success look like beyond standard media metrics?

Loyalty at scale isn’t measured in impressions—it’s visible in action. When fans are truly loyal, they want to consume and create. On Spotify, fandom means building something around the things they love.

Over the past month, we’ve seen a 235% global increase in playlist creation on Spotify related to a certain football tournament. That’s over 1.6 billion playlists! Fans aren’t just watching the matches, they’re extending that moment with Spotify as their constant companion. 

Of course, we’re finding ways to be a part of the conversation in ways that make sense. To celebrate the opening day kickoff, we teamed up with Celsius energy drinks to host a pregame party at Academy LA. With DJ performances, interactive activations, and custom merch, it brought together music and sports in a way only Spotify could, connecting the world’s biggest football stage to the artists and sounds fueling fan excitement.

When a brand earns its place inside one of those moments, that’s where you build loyalty. That’s what you’re looking for. And you’ll feel it before it shows up in a campaign report.

What’s one thing you think too many brands still misunderstand about culture and connection today? 

That speed is the same as relevance. There’s this pressure to react to every trend the moment it surfaces, to always be in the conversation, to never miss a moment. And what I see is brands moving so fast that they never actually have anything to say. Real connection takes some patience. It takes actually understanding who your audience is and what they care about before you try to show up for them. The brands I admire most right now are the ones that have been consistent enough that when they do show up in a cultural moment, people believe it. That consistency is really hard to shortcut.

Check out our full Spotify Beach 2026 recap to learn more about our daytime panels and evening performances.

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