CASE STUDY: Spotify engages media agencies with music playlist battle

Objectives

Spotify invited 13 media agencies in Malaysia to participate in a playlist battle as part of an engagement initiative. As well as interacting with the agencies, Spotify also wanted to increase awareness of ‘Spotify for Brands’—the platform’s advertising model. Another objective of the campaign was to share insights on Malaysia’s Spotify audience and to showcase the capabilities of Spotify’s API.

Execution

Spotify created a microsite where it invited agencies to add as many songs as they could to their playlist over a two-week period in order to win the grand prize of a DJ spinning live at their own year-end party. Other prizes included Spotify Premium codes and music headphones. After adding their favourite songs, agency team members were led to a page that provided an overview of Spotify for Brands, which included a video with consumer insights about Malaysian users, case studies and a media kit.

Results

The 13 media media agencies that took part, which included OMD, PHD, Carat, Mindshare, Zenith, Vizeum and Dentsu Media, added more than 22,000 songs during the campaign—double Spotify’s goal of 10,000. The microsite also saw an average session of more than 23 minutes during the course of the campaign. Vizeum, the winning media agency, added more than 7,000 tracks to its playlist.

Commenting on the campaign, Deirdre Phoon, integrated media planner at Vizeum said: “The Spotify Playlist Battle was truly a battle. We had to believe that we can do it, that we would create the most epic playlist that any agency has ever seen.”