Spreadbeats is the world’s very first spreadsheet music video — made and played entirely in Microsoft Excel.

It’s an unprecedented feat in brand storytelling — the transformation of a single cell of data into a vibrant world of color and sound. We revisited old technologies and seamlessly blended aesthetics, opening up a new world of visual possibility in a new media format.

Through sheer animation prowess, we broke the boundaries of Excel and media planning.

Media planning happens year-round around the world, but spring is by far the most influential time in the industry. Between Upfronts, NewFronts, and, of course, Cannes, the marketing industry is buzzing about new and exciting media opportunities, with everyone looking for ways to add an X factor to their quarterly media plans and gathering inspiration for their annual plans in the fall.

To gain media planners’ attention and budgets, brands go big. Events. Conferences. The full- court press is on. Of course, Spotify Advertising plays the game too. But the noise of the latest “this” and promises of “that” can be overwhelming for a media planner.

Even for Spotify, it can be hard to be heard. Cool new audio features like Daylist and Remix may get buzz, but we wanted to make sure our video and multiformat ads got their fair share of the attention. So this year, Spotify decided to do something different.

We partnered with rising Spotify musician John Summit — just as he’s releasing “Shiver” and riding the buzz of his recent Coachella set — to reimagine a forgotten genre... the music video. Together, we used our music and audio heritage to catapult into a new era where Spotify Advertising could be known for video ads too.

Imagine you’re a media planner. Your job depends on your ability to show ROI. So it’s no wonder that when it comes to RFPing, you prioritize efficient go-tos like Meta and Google, old reliables like YouTube, and shiny objects like TikTok. Spotify just seems like another digital audio platform, and an expensive one at that. Not exactly a must-buy.

But the thing is, Spotify is so much more than an audio platform. It has video and multiformat ads… it’s interactive and engaging, and its ROI goes way beyond numbers on a spreadsheet.

To break through, we had to find a way to hack the RFP process and change the conversation… showing media planners and the entire marketing industry why Spotify Advertising goes beyond just plain digital audio.

Objectives:

Improve ROI perception

Increase familiarity beyond audio

Drive relevance, consideration, and brand love

To get media planners excited about Spotify’s video ad units, we did something unforgettable with Spotify Advertising’s RFPs. In partnership with John Summit, we created Spreadbeats: the world’s first media plan music video, made and played entirely within Microsoft Excel.

Here’s how it worked.

When putting together a plan for their clients, media planners reach out to Spotify to ask for recommendations, the details of which are captured in Excel spreadsheets. This time, we responded with a very different kind of spreadsheet: a music video, created with artist John Summit and coded using Excel’s native functions. The file had to be small enough to be sent as an email attachment, yet capable of playing a full, four-minute music video. We were even able to personalize the videos to the recipient. It was just the conversation starter the Spotify team needed to engage with media planners in a whole new way.

We managed to code the whole music video in one single Excel file of 10MB. Ironically, to do something this advanced, we had to take a trip back to the origins of data and algorithms. We used old compression methods and visualization techniques that hadn’t been used for many, many years, all in the spirit of economy. We transformed Excel built-in functions like ASCII, Graphs, Unicode, and conditional formatting into cutting-edge visualization methods. No AI was used, just human ingenuity and a lot of love. But technology without emotion is antithetical to Spotify’s mission. Enter E7, born into a rectangular box of data but wanting so much more. Like the artists who made this video, she transcends the limitations of Excel and ventures forward into a world of feeling.