To pay homage to one of Brazil’s most respected writers, Machado de Assis, the largest TV network in Brazil was launching a mini-series based on one of his books, Dom Casmurro. Through the launch of the mini-series, we needed to build up TV Globo’s reputation with a new generation, disconnected from the television. We created a website with the book, divided into one thousand extracts. In the website, people could choose and record pieces in real time with their webcam. We enabled a large scale collective reading. At the same time, we hid one thousand DVD’s with unique scenes, in public places for people to find them and hide them again once they had seen it. In less than a month, the reading was completed. Influential admirors talked about it in public and contributed to show the new image of TV Globo.33 million viewers watched the series first episode.

The media called it the best Machado de Assis’ homage of the year.A new quality standard on Brazilian television was estabilished.Almost 106 million people were exposed to press notes related to the mini-series.Spontaneous media exposure cost was the equivalent to 6,7 million dollars in advertising.

We invited 50 Brazilian celebrities and opinion leaders to participate in the first online collective reading project. 33 of them embraced the idea and recorded an excerpt directly from their webcams. They started to put the website www.milcasmurros.com on focus, for people to get involved with it. The media made a big buzz of it, drawing attention on literature and the author himself.Some issues concerning how to record excerpts were faced, but we managed to solve all the doubts in real time, through Twitter and emails.At the same time, inspired on bookcrossing.com, we also placed 1000 DVDs with unreleased scenes from the mini-series in public places in the main Brazilian cities, with the instruction that after viewing it, the DVD should be left at another location. So that whoever found it could watch it and then post their opinion on the serie’s website.

33 milion viewers watched the series first episode.The media called it the best Machado de Assis’homage of the year.We estabilished a new quality standard on Brazilian television.We achieved the world’s first completed online collective reading project.Almost 106 million people were exposed to press notes related to the mini-series.The espontaneous media exposure cost was the equivalent to 6,7 million dollars in advertising.