Skies on firewall

AC/DC Excel themselves

Sony BMG has launched the world’s first video in an Excel spreadsheet for AC/DC single ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Train’; bringing the rock titans off the stage and directly into the office environment. “It’s come about because we recognised that a lot of people have fairly restrictive internet and security policies at work,” said Phil Clandillon – who worked on the project with Steve Milbourne at Sony BMG – “What we really liked was that we could actually subvert the corporate firewalls by including AC/DC’s music in an Excel spreadsheet”.

You can watch the video in all it’s ‘Low Definition’ glory from within the spreadsheet, listen to snippets of tracks from the album, and watch the ‘actual’ full colour video in full. There are also links through to Amazon and Play.com for purchase.

So what?: The black and white grainy feel of this Excel campaign video reminded me off A-ha circa 1984 – with their iconic, scratchy comic book effort (Take On Me). It’s certainly unique, but is it really a good fit for the artist? At first glance it seems AC/DC have come a little ‘Thunder Unstuck’ by engaging with such a mundane blue collar office application. It hardly screams rock n’ roll. However, although it will probably pass over the head of anyone under the age of 20, it’ll be a hit with older cubical-penned desktop-bound office rockers. The title of the song (Rock N Roll Train) however lends itself more directly to office commuters if anything.

“A nice bit of lo-fi cool and you could say a tongue in cheek way to bring AC/DC into the ‘digital age’. It’s not something that will create prolonged engagement but is definitely something that stands out from the crowd and would certainly reach the aging rocker IT support market”
Dom Hodge, Associate Director, FRUKT

www.acdcrocks.com