‣ Penguin Random House
Data-driven social media and OOH campaign
Internationally renowned Penguin Random House is the #1 global book publisher, with more than 15,000 books released annually. They came to Posture Media wanting to celebrate how books have shaped us — both as individuals and as a culture by taking inspiration from Spotify Wrapped and Google’s “A Moment in Search” campaigns. With the biggest collection of books in the industry, they wanted to present Penguin Random House as the owners of “a year in books” in the same way that Spotify owns music and Google owns search. The result? A huge spike in social engagement, earned media, and sales.
Creative Direction
Marketing Strategy
Design
Animation
Illustration
Post Production
Talent Management
Social engagement
This campaign performed extraordinarily on this front. YIB posts on IG averaged 619 shares (24% above average) and 736 saves (636% above average!) These stats and gifting carousels were saved over 1500 times each, and the first stats carousel was shared an incredible 3,655 times — PRH's 6th most shared post ever. The social ads (FB, IG, TikTok) also tracked well above engagement benchmarks.
Converting to sale
On our lists (there are 13) and articles, PRH had significantly above average add to cart rates and affiliate click rates, showing that this content is effectively pushing people to buy.
Earned media
We were thrilled with PR coverage, with 9 pieces live (3.8M readership), including AdAge, Campaign, and It’s Nice That. One of our goals here was to position PRH as the place to find out what the world was reading, as Spotify does for music. The coverage has achieved that beautifully, making favorable comparisons between YIB and Wrapped.
Social Spotlights
Avg. engagements per post (IG): 3.1K
Avg. shares per post (IG): 619
Avg. saves per post (IG): 736
Avg. engagement rate (IG): 3.5%
Performance Highlights
Total impressions: 16.6MT
Total video views: 4.8M
Site visits: 157K
D2C revenue $5.4K
Affiliate revenue: $12.2K
Total revenue: $17.6K
BIPOC authors featured: 40%
Our Approach
“This campaign takes the viewer on a reflective journey of the year by highlighting books that went viral and helped build community — particularly on TikTok with the increasing popularity of #BookTok."
— Winter Mendelson, Co-Founder, Posture Media
Taking inspiration from Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration poem and subsequent book The Hill We Climb, “Find Your Light” acknowledges the challenges and uncertainties of 2021, while casting a hopeful light on the future.
The campaign positions itself as a call to action for readers to discover what brings them joy and purpose and celebrates the power of books to shape us as individuals and as a culture, while telling universal stories that create a sense of community.
The campaign centers on a video narrated by Phoebe Robinson, bestselling author and founder of Tiny Reparations Books, and highlights books that went viral, genres that were popular, and readers’ interactions with Penguin Random House’s featured books and authors, revealing what our reading habits can tell us about the collective experience of 2021.
Watch full video here
Campaign Guidelines
We created Campaign Guidelines so Penguin Random House’s in-house team could continue the campaign across social media platforms, further highlighting readership statistics from the year.
Our guidelines included everything from custom gradients and typography to custom illustrations and graphics so the in-house team was completely set up for success.
Out-Of-Home Advertising
We designed bespoke ads to run in all major cities across the US to promote the campaign
We reached out to hundreds of creators and activists to participate in the campaign and received an overwhelmingly positive response
