From ‘Twas Night Before Christmas to The Grinch, there’s a cultural tradition of storytelling during the holidays. This season, Target set out to add to the tradition by creating a modern story that families could enjoy together, anytime and anywhere: The Holiday Odyssey. We created an interactive storybook that took readers on an epic holiday adventure as three kids and a dog set out on a quest to save Christmas.

We took the age-old tradition of storytelling and made it modern by creating a 48-page, digital storybook. The Holiday Odyssey featured hand-drawn illustrations, an original score, fun character interactions and hidden easter eggs for families to find. We even got super dad and award-winning actor, Neil Patrick Harris, to bring the story to life as our narrator.

Designed for desktop, mobile and tablet, our storybook was fully accessible for people of all ability levels, with transcripts and screen reader capabilities. And just in case bedtime came early, we made it easy for families to pick up where they left off the night before. In the end, we created an experience that was entertaining, immersive, and easy to navigate.

As our story and the holidays came to an end, we saw that 119,000 families enjoyed 19,000 hours of storytime together. On average, readers spent nearly 8 minutes interacting with our story. The success of the storybook was part of a larger campaign that led to Target having its best holiday season ever. Sales were up 2.4% (an all-time high), mobile sales more than doubled from the same time last year, and we saw 60 million additional trips to Target.com. Social mentions grew 42% and the campaign beat the competition this season to become #1 in brand differentiation and appeal. So for Target and all of our guests, this modern holiday adventure story had a very, very happy ending.