Amazon is a company founded on the value of the written word. Whilst it is now known as the ‘everything store’, its genesis was selling books from Jeff Bezos’ garage, and that heritage as a bookseller still matters deeply to the business today. But to limit the scope of the campaign to ‘Amazon is best for books’ would have reduced our capacity of tackling the bigger problem - the lapsing motivation to read them. So, as more people spend their time streaming or scrolling, our challenge was bringing the unique magic of books to life in the very places that were stealing readers’ attention. We wanted to remind people of that unique magic of books and how good it feels to read - in a way that modern-day media simply can’t replicate. In a world of fast content, diving into a good book has never felt so necessary.

We played off a fundamental tension: reading looks passive from the outside, but triggers unrestricted imagination inside the mind of the reader. Animation was key to bringing this insight to life. A mixed-media production echoed the richer, more subjective, and downright fun experience that you have with books. Our assets collaged work from a huge selection of artists. The result was a hugely varied (yet complementary) set of styles for every single execution, with animation paced to lead the customer’s eye through the headline and tell the story as it appears to unfold in the protagonist’s mind. The style mimicked the illustration and animation styles often seen on social media, answering an important part of the brief - engage lapsed readers who find themselves scrolling instead of reading. Each execution is animated in a slightly different way, telling the story of the respective book genre it portrayed.

Across our campaign, we looked to bring ‘truisms’ of the reading feeling to life, based on the way that people were talking about the experiences they had reading online. Knowing that social connections were a powerful tool to get communities re-engaged with reading, we took to social listening to define the genres and phrases that would resonate with our target audience.

From our research, we uncovered multiple insights which made it through to final execution: the feeling of falling in love with a fictional character (in Manga), stealing a line from a romance novel to pimp up your dating profile (in Period Drama), or even the unspoken awe of being lost in a fantasy sci-fi. The challenge was then to bring the campaign to life in a way which was far more engaging than the content it surrounded, and native to the various sites we launched it.

From railway takeovers and 3D billboards that targeted people before their commute, we knew that the placement would be as important as the creative. From full station takeovers, to sites at bus stations and other high-footfall sites around the UK, the OOH helped to launch the campaign and bring to life a wealth of different genres and feelings. These were supported by a huge online campaign that helped direct users to the Amazon bookstore to find their next read.

The campaign was developed over 6 months with a team of 20 illustrators, animators and artists, who brought the reading feeling to life in static and motion. Launching in July 2022, the campaign has run in multiple bursts since.

The campaign is amongst Amazon Book’s most successful ever, and helped to reinvigorate readers worldwide:

– It cut through: branding, likeability, relevance and believability of the campaign were all above industry norms

– The campaign raised reading consideration, the key metric for effectiveness: ‘Reminds me how good it feels to read’ (+7%), Reading consideration (+7.6%)

– The campaign made Amazon more favourable as a brand and destination for books: Across the US and UK Amazon’s favorability as a bookstore rose +7.4% and brand love by 6.6%

– The campaign drove sales: ‘That Reading Feeling Awaits’ is among the most successful Amazon books brand campaign ever, driving sales 23% higher than the next best brand campaign

– The campaign nailed the strategy: Crucially we met our objective of raising the reading intent of all readers, with 29% of new books sales came from customers who were the least likely to read