Celebrating Hispanic culture on one dancefloor

The goal

Every 12 October, the Spanish-speaking world celebrates Día de la Hispanidad. It’s a day to honour what ties Hispanic countries together: a language and a culture that reach across an ocean.

At Nike’s European headquarters in Hilversum, that tie is alive all year. Hispanic colleagues from Nike, Jordan and Converse have built their own community inside the company, and they meet often to keep the bond strong. But this date is different. It’s the day the whole community comes together to say: this is who we are, and this is where we come from.

So when they asked us for the music, the request came with a big responsibility. Every country in the room had to hear itself. Nobody should stand at the edge of the dancefloor feeling that the party was for someone else.

What we did

We started by listening. In the briefing, we learned who would be in the room: mostly Hispanic colleagues, each with a different country in their heart, and guests from other parts of the world who came to celebrate with them.

Then we built the set as a journey. Song by song, it travelled from country to country, so every guest would reach a moment that belonged to them. The kind of song that takes you straight back to a family party, a first dance, a summer at home. And for the guests hearing this music for the first time, we chose rhythms that need no translation.

The day had its quieter moments too. During the award presentations, the music stayed soft and set the tone. When the last award was handed out, it was time to turn it up.

How it went

On 12 October 2023, the dancefloor filled up and stayed full for more than four hours. Non-stop. Every few songs, a different group lit up as they recognised a sound from home, and pulled the people around them into it. That’s how one country’s song became everybody’s song.

The best part came when the music stopped. One by one, people walked up to say thank you. They told us about the songs that had taken them back to special moments in their own countries, and how happy it made them to hear those songs again, surrounded by colleagues.

That’s what music can do. It carries your home with you, and it lets you share it with the person dancing next to you.