Promo Pro: Allison MacDougall, senior account manager, Whitestone (asi/359741)
Client: Spotify
Job: Say thank you to the teams that work on the annual Spotify Wrapped project.
Scope: About 800 kits, drop-shipped to roughly 500 addresses around the world

1. Make an Impression

With over 750 million users worldwide, Spotify bills itself as the “world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.” That’s good news for Whitestone (asi/359741) Senior Account Manager Allison MacDougall, who with her Whitestone teammates runs Spotify’s entire merch operation – from its company store to kits for new hires and new parents. That also includes the company’s thank-you gift to employees tied to its buzzy annual Spotify Wrapped campaign. Released each December, Spotify Wrapped is the brand’s personalized year-in-review experience that gives users a colorful, shareable snapshot of their most-streamed artists, songs and genres. Wildly anticipated each year, it sets social media alight for weeks as listeners compare stats and unique achievements curated by the Spotify Wrapped team.

MacDougall and the Whitestone (asi/359741) team developed a fully custom trucker hat for this year’s Wrapped collection. All photos courtesy of Whitestone Photographer Aeva Roth.

However, Whitestone’s professional relationship with Spotify started on a much smaller scale: producing branded mini-microphones. After finding success there, Spotify approached the company again about potentially taking on something more custom. Whitestone won the bid for its first Wrapped project in 2023, and business from the streaming giant has only grown since.

“We won them over on the first try,” MacDougall says. “We seamlessly delivered everything and took all the hard work off them. They loved the quality, and the relationship just blossomed from there.”

2. Elevate Simple Items

Despite Wrapped typically releasing during the first week of December, the work for the Spotify teams creating the project starts in the spring. For MacDougall, that means designing a kickoff piece of merch, typically a more neutral T-shirt with a slightly unique or urban silhouette.

As the art becomes more finalized throughout the fall, Spotify will usually come to Whitestone with rough ideas for both products and design. They might know they want to do a drinkware piece, but they lean on MacDougall and her team to help pick the exact right items.

MacDougall’s focus is always on quality – specifically, on making sure that a simple item like a black hoodie feels elevated and likely to take up permanent residence in recipients’ closets. For example, this year’s sweatshirt had a simpler design, but Whitestone used a puff print decoration instead of just a flat screen print to add an extra touch.

The main apparel piece for the 2025 Wrapped collection was a black hoodie from AS Colour, with a streetwear silhouette and decorated with a puff print logo.

“These team members work so hard all year on this project, and it’s such a big lift,” MacDougall says. “We want to send them something that’s memorable – a keepsake, something they can wear out and be proud of and communicate about because it is such a cool viral moment.”

3. Be Comfortable Not Having All the Information

The details of each year’s Spotify Wrapped are under strict lock and key – even for business partners like Whitestone. For MacDougall, that means she doesn’t always have the full context of the artwork or images she receives, but has to trust the creativity and vision of the Spotify team anyway to create the best merch possible.

In the 2025 Wrapped, for example, Spotify gave each user a “listening club” based on their music taste, ranging from the “Cloud State Society” to “Club Serotonin” – each represented by an icon created by Spotify’s designers and then sent to Whitestone. “When they sent me all of these little icons, I didn’t even know what they were,” MacDougall says. “But Spotify wanted them to be showcased in a cool, cute, unique way – so what can we do with that?” The distributor decided to turn the art into custom enamel pins and stickers.

Spotify gave the Whitestone team the graphics that would be used to identify users’ “Listening Clubs” when Spotify Wrapped launched, but MacDougall had to plan merch options without knowing the icons’ context.

Sometimes, MacDougall gets additional ideas after the fact, once Wrapped is released and she sees the full creative context. (She would have loved to put “Guess my listening age” on a hat in 2025, for example.) But she’s happy to let Spotify’s design team flex its creative muscles first, and then build from there.

“They’re also so creative,” she adds about the Spotify team, “and this is just as much their baby as it is mine.”

4. Keep All Hands on Deck

Spotify has dozens of global offices around the world, and hundreds of remote employees on top of that, so making sure that each of roughly 800 packages makes its way into the right hands is no easy feat. That’s without considering that Spotify wants these delivered to offices and homes on the day Wrapped drops in early December, within a month or two of when the art is actually finalized. Says MacDougall: “It’s a global feat, for sure.”

With the help of Production Specialist Aye Mortimer, who ensures production is on track to deliver everything safely and correctly, Whitestone leveraged its warehouse facilities in both the U.S. and Europe to get each package kitted and mailed out. Having a global presence was a huge advantage, says MacDougall, for managing both shipping costs and the timing of deliveries to Spotify’s international employees, particularly its large office in Stockholm, Sweden.

From there, the team is constantly checking in on each shipment to confirm it’s set for an on-time delivery – until each of this year’s kits finds its new home.

5. Be Their Best Promo Partner

Aspects of the project like the massive shipping operation prove how valuable a distributor partner can be for a large client like Spotify, MacDougall says. Yes, their teams are more than creative enough to develop engaging designs and select fun product categories, but only a true partner can manage fulfillment and logistics at this scale while making the client’s life easier and keeping the focus on the merch.

The Whitestone team tried to ensure each of the items in its 2025 Spotify Wrapped collection had a retail aesthetic, like with custom backer cards for its Listening Club enamel pins.

Because the Spotify team already brings so much creative energy, MacDougall and her team fall back on their sourcing and decoration expertise to procure the perfect set of SKUs each year. That shows up in thoughtful details. To reinforce a retail aesthetic, the enamel pins were mounted on custom backer cards. And as sustainability has become a priority for Spotify, the hoodies Whitestone designed for the 2024 and 2025 collections were made from recycled materials.