Repainting "boring repetition" with pop music / Warner Music "Saylists"

The problem

In Ireland, more than 10% of children have speech difficulties, and the waiting list for therapy exceeds 45,000 people. Private therapy costs $70 for a 30-minute session (plus $280 for the initial assessment), while traditional repetition exercises using picture books often lose their effectiveness because children's attention spans don't last. The project began when Rob Maguire, a creator at Rothco, talked with his sister, a speech therapist, about the struggles she saw on the ground. Several members of the team had themselves had SSDs as children, making this a deeply personal "labor of love" project.

The insight

"There's one place where people genuinely enjoy the rhythmic repetition of words — and that's in music," said Rothco CCO Alan Kelly. Most people with SSDs are children, which happens to overlap perfectly with the demographic most engaged with pop music. Warner, for its part, resonated strongly with the project too, given the long history of musicians and artists who themselves had speech disorders and overcame them through singing. Rothco's strategy was to redefine music as a therapy tool — and for Warner Music, it was also a chance to prove that music has the power to change lives.

The idea

The algorithm Rothco developed analyzed lyrics based on rules like the frequency, proximity, and positioning within sentences of specific phonemes (CH, D, F, G, K, L, R, S, Z, T). Billed as the largest lyric data analysis ever conducted, it ultimately led to 173 songs being selected by Warner Music and speech therapist Anna Biavati-Smith. The lineup includes songs kids would actually want to listen to, like Dua Lipa's "Don't Start Now," Lizzo's "Good As Hell," and Fatboy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now." The decision to trust "music young people want to listen to" rather than "music parents would approve of" speaks to the integrity of the whole project. The ten playlists were distributed exclusively on Apple Music, available to all subscribers.

What happened

At launch in March 2021, the campaign earned 42 million views and 150 million impressions in earned media, with zero ad spend. Fast Company named Warner Music and Accenture Song among its "Most Innovative Companies," and the Spanish newspaper El Mundo called it "the next great invention." Rothco won the Grand Prix in the Creative Data category at Cannes Lions 2021, along with a Gold and a Bronze in Radio & Audio. Most importantly, the response from the speech therapy community was immediate — therapists began recommending it right away, and children started rapping and singing during their therapy sessions. The campaign drew attention worldwide and even became a quiz question on the popular British show "Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway."

Afterthought

Turning "boring repetition" into "the best musical experience" — that's the whole idea, but the sheer intensity of what it took is staggering: scanning 70 million songs, partnering with therapists, and having all three parties — Warner, Apple, and Rothco — commit fully to pulling it off. The accessibility design is beautiful too — for a $9.99 monthly Apple Music subscription, you get value equivalent to a $280 initial assessment plus $70-per-session therapy. Expansion into other countries and languages is reportedly being considered, so this story seems to be just getting started. When data, creativity, and personal stakes become three parts of one whole like this, advertising can actually become part of the infrastructure of people's lives. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it.

Awards

• Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2020

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