The challenge
Spotify Wrapped is the biggest global PR moment of the year. Everyone knows it, and that is exactly the problem. After years of personal year-in-reviews, the traditional angle, who listened to what the most, had become saturated. Yet another list doesn’t make the news by itself.
The brief
For the eighth year in a row, HAGENS ran the Dutch PR campaign for Spotify Wrapped. The goal for 2025: make Wrapped unmissable in the news through earned media, by putting the national listening behaviour in the spotlight alongside the personal statistics. The question: what story does the Netherlands tell itself?
The strategy
Local relevance
The data provided the answer. Across all genres, Dutch-language music turned out to be dominant: 72 percent of listening time went to homegrown artists, with the viral hit ‘Lotje’ as the figurehead. That became the story. Not what the world listened to, but how the Netherlands listened to itself.
The creation
Your listening age
We combined that local relevance with a new Wrapped feature: your listening age. It held a lot of humour and PR potential for a fresh angle on the well-known Wrapped celebration. And it offered a natural way in to generations who each experience Wrapped in their own way. The tone: plenty of humour, without letting go of the data.
The approach
We translated the national statistics into exclusive pitches per medium and audience. By focusing on specific generations, we tapped into new media channels within the Gen Z audience. We also arranged interviews with that generation’s tastemakers, including Frenna, Roxy Dekker and Samuel Welten: top-performing artists who talked about how proud they were.
The impact
From app to everywhere
The Netherlands didn’t just see its own listening behaviour in the app, but read, watched and heard through almost every channel what moved the country in 2025. The listening age took on a life of its own. The campaign resulted in a record number of more than 400 publications.
400+
Publications
A record
72%
Listening time
to Dutch artists
8
Years of Wrapped
with HAGENS
