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.

The target audience for the campaign was 22-34 year olds. People who had had good experiences reading books but for whom the reading habit was waning. A survey measure of ‘consideration for reading’ was identified as the key campaign metric. If we could make people more interested in reading books, as category leader Amazon would benefit. Of course, others could benefit too. 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. We selected sites with a captured audience who could be motivated into reading at that very moment. With the intrusion of digital devices and media, we’re not so good at carving out time to enjoy a focused activity like reading.

Over 3 months of work, the challenge was to make our advertising more engaging and entertaining and than whatever was distracting viewers from reading. We selected sites with a captured audience who could be motivated into reading at that very moment. From railway takeovers and 3D billboards that targeted people before their commute, to targeted ads over social channels and pre-roll video to catch people during leisure time, we knew that the placement would be as important as the creative. Alongside a large OOH, digital and social buy, we partnered with 20 illustrators, animators and artists to develop a bespoke reading emoji set as well as a bespoke and stickers set for people to share how books have made them feel. To show the freneticism of thoughts coming to life, multiple illustrators were engaged on every execution, with each only told the book genre they were bringing to life.

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%), Motivation to Read (+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