Branded Content: Spotify Playlists & Birchbox

Last October I started beating the drum for brands to think about Spotify playlists as an engagement opportunity after sitting in a restaurant grooving to the tunes playing during our meal. Rachel Jo Silver of Birchbox immediately pinged me to chat about some of programs she was running. As a lifestyle products company it makes perfect sense that they'd use music to help solidify the emotional connection between their brand and potential customers. Here's what she told me:

1. Sweepstakes with Stila. Every week we host sweepstakes on our Facebook page sponsored by one of our brand partners. Recently, Stila gave away a makeup-case music player. So, for that sweepstakes we embedded a 'Getting Ready' Spotify playlist into the sweepstakes template. After fans entered the sweepstakes we asked them to comment with songs that they thought we should have included on the list. To support that sweepstakes we asked our network of 1,000+ bloggers to write a blog post featuring their favorite songs for getting ready. We published three bloggers' playlists on our blog along with our own Spotify playlist.  We saw great Twitter engagement around this campaign with people Tweeting us songs they wanted us to include. 

2. Link to Spotify playlist in Birchbox Man box. Because our Birchbox Man box is focused on not just grooming products, but lifestyle as well, we decided to include a Spotify link on one of our in-box cards. We used a custom URL Birch.ly/JohnnyCash2012 which linked to a Spotify playlist based on a list Cash had made of his 'Desert Island Albums'.