Spotify codes a music video inside an Excel media plan — D&AD Black Pencil, 4 Clio Grands

FCB built a John Summit music video entirely inside an Excel media plan, so planners find Spotify's pitch where they actually decide ad buys.

Spotify

创意是什么Make the ad a music video coded inside the media-plan spreadsheet: planners who open the Excel file get John Summit's track and a 3D character born from cell E7.伤筋动骨

当时的题目

Spotify sells video ad inventory, but the people who decide buys — media planners — spend their days in dry RFP spreadsheets and skim most pitches. The campaign had to make Spotify's video+audio story land inside that environment.

它是怎么成立的

Spotify sells ad inventory, and its most important buyers — media planners — spend their days inside Excel, reviewing RFP spreadsheets sent by ad platforms. Banner pitches and case-study PDFs land in that same inbox and get skimmed, or ignored.

FCB New York's answer was to make the medium the proof. 'Spreadbeats' is a four-minute music video coded entirely inside a media-plan spreadsheet — built with ASCII, graphs, Unicode, conditional formatting and macros, soundtracked by DJ John Summit's 'Shiver.' The story follows cell E7, which evolves into a colorful 3D character, a metaphor for what audio plus video can do for a brand.

The team kept the whole file under 10MB so it could travel by email, then dropped it into unsuspecting brand and agency inboxes in 14 markets after weeks of testing. Planners opened a file that looked like work and found a party, built with the same macros, formulas and conditional formatting they use every day.

The campaign swept the 2025 awards: four Grand Clios, six Golds, two Silvers and four Bronzes at the Clio Awards, plus a D&AD Black Pencil in Digital Marketing.

妙在哪

It met the audience in their own workflow: the ad appeared exactly where planners decide buys, not in media they skip.
Building the video inside Excel made the claim experiential — planners felt what video and audio on Spotify can do.
The 10MB email constraint forced economy and pushed the team toward inventive 80s/90s visual techniques.
It made the unglamorous media plan the hero, turning an industry workhorse into something worth sharing.

做出来什么

Planners opened their own work tool and found a music video; Microsoft shared it on Instagram. The campaign swept awards: four Grand Clios, six Golds, two Silvers and four Bronzes at Clio 2025, plus a D&AD Black Pencil in Digital Marketing.

可以借走的

Deliver the message inside the audience's own tool: a music video in the very spreadsheet planners use proves Spotify's video+audio pitch without a single banner.

后来

Microsoft itself shared the spreadsheet music video on Instagram, and the campaign became a B2B creativity benchmark. Spotify and FCB positioned it as proof that media plans don't have to be lifeless, and it was credited with making planners rethink what a Spotify media plan could be — the idea remains the agency's flagship award winner of 2025.

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