SPOTIFY | Spreadbeats | 2024
World-Class Craft, Born From an Excel Cell / SPOTIFY "Spreadbeats"
Try to imagine the moment someone first came up with the idea of making a 4-minute music video in Excel. Somebody definitely laughed and said "that's insane." But that insane idea went on to win a Grand Prix. That's what advertising can be.
The problem
Picture the daily life of a media planner. Their whole job is proving ROI, and when they write up an RFP, they reach for efficient video ad platforms like Meta, Google, YouTube, or TikTok. Spotify gets filed under "audio platform"—and an expensive one at that. As a video ad platform, it almost never makes the shortlist. But in reality, Spotify isn't just audio. It can handle video and multi-format ads too. That gap between perception and reality needed closing.
The insight
So Spotify zeroed in on the place where media planners spend the most time when considering where to place ads: the media plan spreadsheet—in other words, Excel. "Media plans are the unsung workhorses of the industry, never the first choice for telling a creative story," says Spotify's Global Creative Director Rich Frankel. The spreadsheet is sacred ground, where decisions worth millions of dollars in ad budgets get made. Spotify saw a chance not just to show up there, but to completely reinvent it. In other words: don't just *tell* them, *show* them—right where they live, inside Excel itself.
The idea
Spotify partnered with Coachella headliner John Summit to code a 4-minute music video directly into tabs of an Excel spreadsheet. Rows and columns became the canvas, springing to life the moment you opened the file. The video was built entirely from scratch using only native Excel features—ASCII characters, Unicode, charts, conditional formatting. The story's hero is a cell named "E7." Born into the logical world of data, she questions where she belongs, and through a visual journey grows and evolves into a colorful 3D character. On top of that, Spotify handed its sales team a "Spreadbeats Generator." Enter a planner's name, a brand name, and a few other details, and it spits out a custom Excel file containing both a personalized music video and an actual RFP response sheet. Perfect.
What happened
After several weeks of testing across 14 markets—the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, India, and Singapore—it was delivered directly into the inboxes of brands and agencies. At Cannes Lions it took home 9 awards, including 1 Grand Prix and 2 Golds, across multiple categories such as Creative B2B, Digital Craft, and Creative Data. It earned 3,730 points, making it the most awarded campaign in the world over a three-year span. Jury president Kentaro Kimura (Hakuhodo) said, "Work that moves people using advanced digital technology competed against work built on pure human craft. In the end, 'great human creativity' won out over 'technical wizardry.'"
Afterthought
The idea of making a music video in Excel is so absurd that I laughed the first time I heard about it. But once I actually saw it, I realized—this is seriously impressive. "They turned a mundane, boring spreadsheet into a vivid, exciting music video. They achieved real craft using decades-old, nostalgic technology. Only Spotify could pull this off." Who would have guessed a B2B ad could become the most celebrated piece of craft in the world? But it happened. I think that's what advertising work really comes down to: committing fully, with total seriousness, to something utterly ridiculous. I want to be a lot more seriously ridiculous myself!
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2024
