Imagine a platform that delivers nearly every song you’ve ever wanted to hear for free. AND on top of that, allows complete integration with your favorite social media channels. That is Spotify. It’s the “next big thing” in the digital music era and has amassed quite a following, and it is poised to become a perfect gateway for brands to engage with their consumers in a more personal way.

That sounds awesome, but what exactly is it?

Generally speaking, Spotify is an online music streaming service. Once you download the program onto your computer, phone, or tablet their entire library of music is at your fingertips. This differs from competitors such as Pandora because you get to choose the music you listen to. It allows you to make your own playlists and/or listen to playlists created by other Spotify users.

What about the social network integration?

After installing Spotify on your computer, it will ask you to sign in through Facebook. After doing so, Spotify will sort through your friends list and suggest people for you to “follow.” This allows you to see all the music your friends are currently listening to and see their playlists. It is great for music discovery as people generally have at least one friend with great musical tastes. Not only can you follow your friends, but you can also follow your favorite artists and hopefully one day your company’s brand!

Spotify provides that very valuable opportunity for fresh produce companies to showcase an added dimension of their brand to audiences. A few brands have already taken advantage of the social element of Spotify such as Mercedes-Benz, and even Barack Obama, but it is still a relatively new marketing tool. Here are three ways to incorporate Spotify into your fresh produce social media and marketing strategy and give your brand that personal edge.

Brand Playlists

This is a huge opportunity for brands to personify themselves to consumers. This is especially true for brands in the fresh produce industry, given the personal element of the fresh product we grow. Both music and food preferences are very personal and cover the entire spectrum of tastes. Therefore, your brand’s musical tastes will undoubtedly align with certain groups of consumers. So why not make a playlist of your favorite songs you workout to? Or the office’s favorite music? The opportunities are endless and all of these playlists can be shared on all of your social media platforms! For example, Reebok has created countless workout playlists for their followers to listen to such as Eli Manning’s Conditioning Exercises FitList.

Spotify Parties

Not only does Spotify allow you to make your own playlists, but you can also create “open playlists” for anyone to add tracks to. Imagine you are having a huge get together with customers, employees, and/or family on the invite list. Create a playlist and ask everyone to add one song that they would like to hear at the event. Sure, it would be an eclectic set list, but it will add an undeniable personal touch to your party… and we hear there are a few of those being planned in NOLA for Fresh Summit!

Fan Playlists

Building on the previous idea, except on a much bigger scale, create an open playlist for all of your fans to add to. Try to tie it into something that people use your product for. For example, have consumers add their favorite songs to cook to on a playlist. Herbal Essences did a fantastic example of engaging their customers this way by creating an open playlist named “Songs You Sing In The Shower.” People added over 697 songs to the playlist and over 1,700 people followed it on Spotify!

And of course, the team at DMA decided to give this is a try with our “Fresh Produce Hits!” playlist. We asked everyone in the office to add their 5 favorite songs and the results were interesting, to say the least. There was everything from Ms. Parton to Jay-Z just as Brock had predicted in his post about the new Myspace.

Spotify is still relatively new, but it is definitely a social media outlet to keep your eye on given the emotional connection that music inspires.

So what do you think? Are you going to give Spotify a try? If you do, don’t forget to add some of your favorites to our “Fresh Produce Hits!” playlist and make sure to click “follow” so you can keep up with all of the great music being added to it.