How Kulfi Collective made Spotify Wrapped 2025 speak the language of pop culture

Every December, Spotify Wrapped lands – a personalised recap of your year in music. Timelines fill with screenshots, reels, and memes as people flaunt their top songs, artistes, and guilty pleasures. Wrapped has become less about the app and more about cultural bragging rights, like a viral Bollywood meme dominating feeds.

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Spotify Wrapped does something most brands struggle with all year: it gets people to advertise for it. What changes is how the brand chooses to enter a moment that has already taken over social media. In 2025, as timelines filled up with listening minutes and top-artist flexes, Spotify leaned into a different kind of familiarity – not a song but a pop-culture reference the internet hadn’t let go of. 

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Beyond just the celebrity-led films, Spotify Wrapped 2025 also reflected wider listening trends in India. According to Spotify, fans were nearly three times more likely to stream soul music, 50% more likely to listen to folk, and ten times more likely to cue up lo-fi beats compared to global averages. 

Relaxation playlists dominated too, with Indians 173% more likely to listen to calm music and 151% more likely to play soothing tracks than the global average. Podcasts around education and spirituality also saw a spike, highlighting how Wrapped isn’t just a snapshot of music taste—it’s a mirror of cultural moods, daily habits, and even aspirations.

Its latest Wrapped film, featuring Emraan Hashmi and Raghav Juyal, doesn’t explain the context. Even if you haven’t watched Netflix’s Ba***ds of Bollywood, chances are you’ve seen that scene where Raghav is seen fanboying over Emraan, which social media had clipped, memed and remixed endlessly. Spotify’s creative simply assumes recognition and builds from there.

Kulfi Collective, which conceptualised the campaign, says the decision was intentional: Spotify’s creative assumes audience recognition and builds from there. “At a global level, Wrapped already has a very defined aesthetic and tone,” says Dinkar Dwivedi, senior creative director, Kulfi Collective. 

“In India, the brief was clear: drive awareness of Wrapped in a big way, because not every Spotify user opens it. But while doing that, it had to feel like a celebration. Not just of your music, but of the year itself.”

In India, Dwivedi explains, music, movies and pop culture don’t live in separate silos. “Here, films, songs and the people behind them all sit in the same cultural bucket. So Wrapped becomes less about just audio behaviour and more about a year-end snapshot of pop culture.”

Why this Bollywood scene became Wrapped material

According to Ashish Shakya, writer and creative consultant on the film, the Emraan–Raghav pairing wasn’t forced; it was already circulating in culture.

“When the inquiry came in, Ba***ds of Bollywood was on everyone’s mind,” he says.

“Even if people didn’t like the show, that one moment had travelled far beyond it. You don’t need to watch the series. That scene alone tells you the dynamic.”

For Shakya, that made it ideal Wrapped material. “Wrapped shows you who you really are,” he says. “Raghav can act however he wants on the surface, but his Wrapped reveals the truth, that he’s still a fan. Once that articulation is clear, the film builds itself.”

Kulfi Collective had also worked on two different Spotify Wrapped campaigns in India last year, featuring Jackie Shroff, Ananya Panday, Uorfi Javed and Orry. 

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The throughline, Shakya notes, hasn’t changed. “With celebrities, the best work happens when they’re willing to play with their image, either leaning fully into the stereotype or flipping it completely. This was a reversal, and that’s where the humour came from.”

Does pop culture risk alienation?

Leaning into internet memory always comes with a risk: what about audiences who don’t get the reference?

For Nikita D’souza, associate vice president of marketing and communications at Kulfi Collective, that’s a trade-off every piece of storytelling makes. “Not every piece of content will land with everyone,” she says.

“The goal is for it to not feel like advertising. When something has a large cultural footprint, that’s usually your safest bet.”

Shakya agrees. “Even if you didn’t like the show, you’ve probably seen that reel. That’s enough context. It’s not about the series — it’s about fandom and image. That’s universal.”

Two films, same idea

Spotify Wrapped 2025 also featured a separate South Indian film, built around a very different but equally recognisable cultural trope.

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Dwivedi explains that the Tamil-language film draws from veteran actor Sarath Kumar’s iconic Nattamai character, a familiar village assembly setup where tradition is pitted against modernity. “The idea is similar,” he says. “Wrapped shows who you really are. When his assistant reveals his Spotify Wrapped, it’s not what you expect.”

The film adds another layer by referencing a modern Tamil song that itself samples music from an older Sarath Kumar film, reinforcing Wrapped’s theme of past and present colliding.

Both films were developed under Kulfi Collective, with the South India film written by Surbhi Bharadwaj, who also works with the agency. Different writers led each region’s version. “The cultural specificity changes,” says Dwivedi, “but the insight stays the same.”

Kulfi Collective is responsible for Spotify’s content and social media marketing and has been working with the brand for over two years.

On set: commitment makes the joke land

Both Shakya and Dwivedi stress that the films wouldn’t have worked without the actors fully committing to the joke.

“These lines are ridiculous,” Shakya laughs. “For it to land, Emraan had to say them with complete seriousness, and he did. He was game for retakes, variations, and improvisation.”

Dwivedi adds that both Hashmi and Juyal actively engaged with the script. “They weren’t just performing lines. They had opinions, suggested changes, and pushed for better jokes. That level of investment shows on screen.”

The same applied to the South film, he says, where Sarath Kumar was “completely comfortable spoofing his own image.”