In Russia, everything is superlative: From its geographical size, space industry to ballet or folklore, the country impresses. But Mother Russia is also famous for something else. The country gave birth to the most famous writers in the world, who brought it no less than five Nobel Prizes. Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, or Bulgakov are just some of the authors that made Russian literature be considered amongst the most influential and developed in the world.

With such a strong literary background, we bet that the country’s population masters this world. Well, maybe boomers still do, as teenagers don’t read as much anymore. And it’s perfectly understandable why; temptations are everywhere: booze, parties, and technology. The latter makes youths live in a virtual world where they step into via social platforms only to feed their minds with useless information.

Beeline, one of the biggest Russian telecom companies, is all aware of this, and together with Contrapunto creative agency — part of BBDO Russia — it found a way to keep feeding teenagers’ minds but with something more valuable than random influencers’ challenges.

During this week’s #ThrowBrandThursday we take a deep dive into a project that brought youngsters’ attention back to books. To do this, the duo looked into one other thing that teenagers are interested in: Rap music. This type of genre is highly appreciated in this part of the world and, once it arrived in Russia, rap distilled the country’s cultural heritage. To quote the agency behind the project, rap “has always been more bookish and less gangsta.”

By combining these two tools that teenagers focus on — rap and smartphones — Beeline aims to reignite their passion for reading. The “Greatest Reads” campaign kicked off on YouTube with a music video by Noize MC. The clip, shot by iconic Russian rap videos Lado Kvataniya, features a group of street artists ZUKCLUB, whose artwork in the video materialized on the streets later.

To meet the technological expectations of teenagers, the brand joined hands with Yandex —  a company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning — scanning the library of world literature. By using machine learning, they compared the results to Russian rap tracks of the past two decades. 400 matches were discovered, which were (and still are) visible on a webpage supporting the initiative.

The music video wasn’t all. The partners came up with outdoor activities, digital projects, and a massive social media flashmob — actions that kept the public’s attention for more than two months. The project’s hashtag became viral and was proudly used to display their reading on Instagram.

A similar project took form in Romania, in 2018. Firma, an alternative rock music band, came up with the idea of empowering people to rediscover the beauty of poetry. The band released “Poezii Alese Vol. I” (“Chosen Poems” in English) album, with songs inspired by famous Romanian poets both classics and contemporaries, like Mihai Eminescu, George Bacovia, or Ana Blandiana. In an interview with a local newspaper, Daniel “Rocca” Stoicea, the band’s vocalist, said that their album positively influenced their listeners. Their goal was to make people read more poetry. But they were surprised to find out that their “product” unlocked another world, that of contemporary poets, who were not so well known until the album’s release.

Now, let’s get back to our campaign and see its results: The MC’s video gathered more than 5 million views on YouTube and 14 million others on social media platforms. When it was released, the video reached top 5 on YouTube, becoming the hottest topic nationwide. But the best thing of all is that around 40% of teenagers who have heard about the project have started to read more.

Credits:

Client: Beeline

Agency: Contrapunto