Situation: MailChimp needed a creative way to anchor their Read This Summer program, advancing literacy – now, during a time of Covid and Civil Unrest, that was culturally relevant and didn’t appear tone-deaf.

Brief: Develop a multi-episode short-form series that supports Read This Summer, while advancing healthy and well-needed conversations timed to our country’s current situation.

Objectives:

Inspire reading through an entertaining approach

Spark thoughtful and appropriate conversation

Attract additional audience(s) to the program

Book Shook is a 3-part short form series featuring Yara Shahidi, Jameela Jamil and Reese Witherspoon as they each discuss one book that shook them. These women told their deeply personal and heartfelt stories, sharing how this powerful book impacted their lives and helped them to chart – or rechart – their courses.

Yara took us through the both personal and powerful depths of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Jameela connected us to her self-awakening with Hunger by Roxanne Gay. And Reese moved us with the gravitas she felt from The Measure of our Success by Marian Wright Edelman.

During a time of heightened civil unrest, providing these stories to our audiences exposed points of view, powerful thinking and new works to a society in need of hope and enlightenment. It too shook those who consumed it.

MailChimp needed a creative way to anchor their Read This Summer program, a virtual book festival which spotlights and celebrates literature. This came at a time of civil unrest, making the need to be culturally thoughtful and additive a critical part of the ask.

Our strategy was to lean into our mission for both Hello Sunshine and Reese’s Book Club, by putting women at the center of the story – and make those stories powerful, inspiring and incredibly human conversations.

We strategically chose women who would inspire audiences to read these moving works, thus further advancing well needed conversations around race, gender and mental health.

Shot safely during COVID in locations that were authentically intimate and inviting, we made a point to showcase diverse talent that audiences would feel connected to and inspired by.

Implementation: 3-part Short-Form Video Series

Timeline: 45 Days from brief to delivery

Placement: MailChimp Read This Summer Platform, MailChimp IG, Reese’s Book Club IGTV, Hello Sunshine IG, Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine YouTube

Scale: Held 3 Individual Productions (1 per episode) across 3 separate days in private and intimate locations for each talent. Post Production immediately followed each shoot to make delivery.

Our goals ran deeper than metrics and were to move audiences just as these books moved these women. To have them deeply feel something and to spark thinking. The emotional impact the work had was felt by all and included social media comments such as, “It was really something special listening to you speak about this book.”, “This brought me to tears. Thank you.”, “Very powerful.” and “What a beautiful series.”

Beyond that, our metrics include:

Hello Sunshine O&O Channels

979.6K impressions and 97K views on Youtube

1.15M impressions and 395K video views on Instagram

Outperformed Hello Sunshine’s IGTV averages by 3x.

Mailchimp O&O Channels

Video Views (Mailchimp Presents/Mailchimp YouTube): 15k

Mailchimp Presents Social Posts: 10k

Newsletter Opens: 110k

Book Shook episodes were the top visited pieces of content at launch and throughout August and September.

Teaser is the highest performing video on Mailchimp Presents Instagram ever