Chicago Latino Film Festival's Danceable Trailers campaign by Lapiz turned film plots into original reggaeton songs aired on Chicago radio and in dance clubs,
ARCHIVEChicago Latino Film Festival Hides Movie Trailers Inside Reggaeton Songs
Danceable Trailers is a 2018 audio advertising campaign created by Lapiz for the Chicago Latino Film Festival, in which original reggaeton songs built around the plots of three festival films were aired on Chicago radio stations and played in dance clubs across the United States, with an announcer revealing only at each song's end that the music was, in fact, a movie trailer.
The campaign was published in April 2018, timed to coincide with the annual run of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, which is produced each April by the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, according to chicagolatinofilmfestival.org. The festival, established in 1985, presents more than 100 films from Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and the United States and is recognised as one of the largest and most comprehensive Latino film festivals in the United States, per chicagolatinofilmfestival.org. Operating as a nonprofit, Chicago-based Latino film exhibition institution rather than a commercial media company, the festival required a promotional approach capable of reaching Hispanic audiences on culturally resonant terms rather than through conventional advertising formats.
Lapiz, the Chicago-based agency credited in award coverage as Lapiz/Leo Burnett Chicago, answered that brief by commissioning three fully produced reggaeton tracks, each dramatising the narrative of a different festival film. The songs were engineered to be indistinguishable from genuine commercial reggaeton releases until the closing moments, when an announcer or DJ voice broke the illusion and identified the content as a trailer for a film screening at the Chicago Latino Film Festival. The campaign occupied the Audio category and comprised one media asset per song, distributed through Chicago radio stations and dance club environments where reggaeton audiences were already congregating. Clapboard rates the campaign 72 out of 100.
Lapiz grounded the Danceable Trailers campaign in a precise consumer insight about the relationship between Hispanic Americans and music. The agency's stated rationale, as documented on clapboard.com, was direct: the team created a new way to promote Hispanic movies to Americans who love their music. That framing reflects a deliberate decision to reach the target audience inside an experience they were already choosing, rather than interrupting it with a conventional advertisement.
The Chicago Latino Film Festival's nonprofit status means it competes for audience attention without the media-buying resources available to commercial distributors. In the United States, major streaming platforms including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have invested heavily in Spanish-language and Latin American content in the years surrounding the 2018 campaign, raising the baseline expectation for how Latino cinema is marketed. Against that backdrop, a festival operating on a nonprofit budget required a strategy that could generate earned attention and cultural participation rather than purchased reach. Reggaeton, as a genre with demonstrable crossover penetration across English-language and Spanish-language radio formats in Chicago, offered precisely that vehicle.
By airing the songs on Chicago radio stations and placing them in dance clubs, Lapiz ensured that the creative work entered the same rotational context as legitimate commercial music releases. Listeners engaged with the songs on the genre's own terms before any disclosure occurred. The reveal mechanism at the end of each track recontextualised the entire listening experience as a narrative preview, creating a moment of recognition rather than a moment of interruption. This approach transformed a low-budget audio placement into a format that generated word-of-mouth within communities already attending dance venues and tuning into Spanish-language radio across the United States.
Luciana Cani led the creative work as SVP Executive Creative Director at Lapiz, with María Bernal serving as VP Creative Director, according to clapboard.com. Bernal held her role at Leo Burnett/Lapiz from January 2017 to November 2019, per her profile on linkedin.com, placing her squarely within the team responsible for conceiving and executing the campaign during its April 2018 publication. Copywriters Javier Valle, Roberto Luque, Ernesto Martínez, and Rodrigo Ca— whose credits are documented on clapboard.com — contributed to the lyrical and narrative construction of the three reggaeton tracks.
The core creative challenge was one of genre authenticity. A song built around a film plot would fail entirely if it sounded like advertising copy set to a reggaeton beat. The production had to satisfy the sonic and structural conventions of commercial reggaeton well enough that radio programmers would air it in standard rotation and club DJs would play it on the floor. Each track therefore needed to function simultaneously as a genuine piece of music and as a compressed narrative that communicated the emotional premise of a specific film. The announcer or DJ reveal at the conclusion was the only element that departed from the format of a standard release, and its placement at the end meant it arrived only after listeners had already engaged with the content on musical terms.
The decision to produce three distinct tracks rather than a single execution meant the campaign could represent three different films from the festival programme, broadening both the narrative range and the radio placement opportunities across Chicago. That volume of original music production for a nonprofit festival campaign represents a meaningful creative and production commitment, and the resulting work was formally recognised for its craft in the audio category by two separate international and national bodies.
ARCHIVEThe Danceable Trailers campaign earned formal recognition from two independent award bodies. The London International Awards recognised the campaign in 2018 with a Bronze in Radio and Audio for Original Music, and also placed it on the shortlist as a finalist in Radio and Audio for Use of Music, according to clapboard.com. The following year, the Radio Mercury Awards named the campaign a winner in the Spanish Language Spot or Campaign category, carrying a prize of three thousand dollars, as reported by clapboard.com and corroborated by Radio Mercury Awards documentation. The campaign was credited at the Radio Mercury Awards to Chicago Latino Film Festival and Leo Burnett Chicago/Lapiz, per clapboard.com.
No audited attendance figures, streaming metrics, or ticket-sales data attributable directly to the Danceable Trailers campaign are publicly available, as noted in research sourced from chicagolatinofilmfestival.org and cmsproductions.com. The absence of such figures is consistent with the festival's nonprofit operating structure, which does not publish commercial performance disclosures of the kind required by investors or shareholders.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness can be read through its award trajectory. A Bronze at the London International Awards in Original Music signals that the tracks were evaluated as genuine musical compositions, not merely as advertising vehicles with musical elements. Recognition in Use of Music as a finalist confirms that the strategic integration of the genre into the campaign's persuasion mechanic was considered distinctive by the judging panel. The Radio Mercury Award win in Spanish Language demonstrates that the campaign also performed credibly within a domestic, format-specific context, validating both the cultural authenticity of the execution and its effectiveness as a radio product within the United States.
Danceable Trailers is a 2018 audio campaign by Lapiz for the Chicago Latino Film Festival. Lapiz produced original reggaeton songs based on three festival film plots, aired them on Chicago radio stations and in dance clubs, and revealed at each song's end that the music was actually a movie trailer, according to clapboard.com.
Lapiz created Danceable Trailers. The agency, based in Chicago and identified in award documentation as Lapiz/Leo Burnett Chicago, published the campaign in April 2018. SVP Executive Creative Director Luciana Cani and VP Creative Director María Bernal led the creative team, according to clapboard.com and linkedin.com.
Danceable Trailers won a Bronze at the 2018 London International Awards in Radio and Audio for Original Music and reached the shortlist for Use of Music, according to clapboard.com. The campaign then won the 2019 Radio Mercury Award for Spanish Language Spot or Campaign, as reported by clapboard.com.
Lapiz commissioned fully produced reggaeton tracks that sounded indistinguishable from commercial releases. Songs aired on Chicago radio stations and played in dance clubs, reaching Hispanic audiences inside their own cultural experiences. An announcer revealed the trailer identity only at the end, turning a music moment into a film discovery, per clapboard.com.
The Chicago Latino Film Festival was established in 1985 and is produced each April by the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, according to chicagolatinofilmfestival.org. It presents more than 100 films from Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and the United States and is one of the largest Latino film festivals in the country.
Lapiz built the campaign on a single cultural insight: Hispanic Americans love reggaeton. Rather than interrupting music with advertising, the agency made the advertisement the music itself. Three film plots became three original tracks, distributed through the same channels as commercial releases, with disclosure deferred to the final seconds, per clapboard.com.
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