Case Study:
Spotify's Ethics and Compliance Training That Employees Actually Wanted to Watch
The opening scene to The Sweet Spot showing the main characters of the interactive ethics and compliance experience.
Labyrinth Training partnered with Spotify, the world's leader in music streaming, to design and deliver a custom ethics and compliance eLearning series that rolled out across 43 offices in 26 countries.
The goal was to bring Spotify's entire compliance landscape into one coherent, engaging world, spanning anti-bribery, insider trading, data privacy and ethical playlist curation. Labyrinth Training built an interactive, character-driven animated series around Spotify's internal culture and brand identity, embedding compliance education into a fictional contest that gave staff a world they actually wanted to spend time in. The result was a training experience that didn't feel like training at all.
The Sweet Spot was recognized across the industry with multiple awards in 2024, including a Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Award Gold for Best Advance in Video Learning, a Telly Award Gold, and an Anthem Award Bronze for Employee Retention Initiative.
Project Summary and Strategy
The goal of the partnership was to meaningfully raise awareness among the Spotify staff of the ways they can ethically impact the world through their business practices. Touching upon topics ranging from anti-bribery and insider trading to data privacy and ethical playlist curation, the resulting series broke the mold of what the staff had come to expect from a typical ‘training’ session. They enjoyed the experience as much as they were educated, all while establishing a new identity for the Spotify Compliance Team.
Members of “The Band” (Spotify employees,) around the world from Europe to Asia to the US met six fellow Bandmates and followed their exploits as they launched “The Sweet Spot”, an eponymous fictional contest created for the series.
“OMG best course ever!!!! Please continue creating content like this! so fun and engaging!!”
— Spotify staff member
Goals & Objectives
Spotify and Labyrinth Training collaborated to set goals for “The Sweet Spot”, with a focus on engaging and entertaining the staff while educating them on key topics:
Create an engaging program that is relatable for all Spotify employees, to be rolled out in global offices spanning 26 countries.
Conceive of a memorable, yet typical-for-Spotify-employees compliance experience around a fictional contest.
Establish a diverse set of characters across roles and identifying traits to ensure Spotify employees feel represented.
Work with Spotify’s Subject Matter Experts across topics ranging from anti-bribery and insider trading to data privacy and ethical playlist curation to create a series of impactful learnings unique to Spotify.
Deliver a creative product in line with the first-rate design production values that Spotify is known for.
Results
Successfully launched “The Sweet Spot” across 43 offices, in 26 countries.
Received overwhelmingly positive response from Spotify employees with comments such as: “Very engaging, thanks for sharing! This is a great way to present this info so that it sinks in easier”
Spotify and Labyrinth Training collaborated to design and bring to life 6 diverse, unique lead characters representing an array of identities.
Educated Spotify employees across multiple, critical compliance topics in a three-part series that engaged and entertained the staff while they learned.
Realized visually stunning and recognizable areas from the Spotify offices and leveraged the deep musical connection with the Spotify brand with original jingles and song.
Preview
Below is a scene lift from Episode 1 of Spotify’s The Sweet Spot. We meet the 6 main characters for the first time…
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