Spotify and the greatest micro-influencer campaign ever?
Hi from 25 – 37
The 2010s saw influencer marketing go from nonexistent (in its current form, at least) to one of the most booming areas of the industry. Fittingly, the decade is being capped with a reminder of arguably the greatest influencer/micro-influencer campaign ever; yes, I’m saying it, EVER: Spotify’s wrapped year-in-review feature, which has become omnipresent on social in Decembers for the past few years and leverages an influencer and “micro-influencer” roster that doesn’t cost the company a dime.
“Micro-influencer” is in quotes because no, that random dude from high school nor my old neighbor nor my former coworker are influencers, yet they all partook is Spotify’s campaign and I took the time to absorb their year-end recaps just out of curiosity. They may only have a couple hundred followers each, but seemingly everyone and their mom has been posting their wrap-ups to social, which is somewhat annoying but honestly impressive in terms of the sheer number of people Spotify has compelled into serving as mini-ambassadors and sharing the company’s aesthetically-pleasing, ready-to-post branded infographics.
It’s kind of crazy to think about the rabid sharing of Spotify’s data in comparison to how we’d process similar campaigns from other big tech companies. If Facebook or Amazon or Google or Twitter spoon fed us customized year-end reports of our activities and consumptions that were perfectly formatted for our Instagram Stories, would the response be the same? Hell no. There would probably be outrage. And yet Spotify is doing it with massive success thanks to what? Maybe nothing more than its tamer image and freedom (for the most part) from controversy.
Also interesting is the number of artists that participate in the trend. Most share their artist stats, but some also share their personal listening stats. Spotify isn’t paying these artists with massive followings to share its content, so you can only imagine the earned media value and ROI. Yesterday John Mayer posted his most listened-to song of 2019 on his Instagram Story and what did I do? Go to Spotify and play it.
There have been plenty of major influencer campaigns with major budgets that have been major successes in the past few years. Look at Hulu helping top athletes “sell out” to promote its live sports offering, Daniel Wellington collaborating with seemingly every cast member of The Bachelor franchise ever, and Calvin Klein partnering with the hottest people in the entire universe to showcase how their underwear would look on you if you were one of the hottest people in the universe, for example. But I’m giving my crown to Spotify, which has found an incredibly simple way to permeate social’s clutter at the end of the year, year after year, through your friends and your random acquaintances and some of your favorite celebrities, all without spending a cent on hiring influencers.
Yes, I will lose my mind over the deluge of wrap-up posts over the next few weeks, but I’ll also have Spotify way more top of mind than normal.
I’ll be writing once per week throughout 25 about anything/everything. Let’s get weird. Follow here.
