This campaign set out to increase awareness and sales of a book for teens called 'Thirteen Reasons Why'. The book had been on the market for a year, in hard cover and had met with limited success.The fictional book is about a girl who committed suicide and left behind a suicide note that was a set of 13 audio tapes. Each tape named a person who was responsible for her decision to take her life. Our idea was to give Hannah Baker (the teen protagonist) a voice by creating the tapes and releasing them anonymously on YouTube and elsewhere. We wanted to create an air of intrigue that ultimately allowed them to be discovered by fans and non fans alike. Discussions about the tapes among viewers soon followed and ultimately teens promoted the book to each other as a result. Sales soared.

The first video was released in November and the final tape was released in April. There was no set time line. We waited for the first tape to be discovered. We let the views build and let fans arrive and begin conversations before another tape was released. We continued to release tapes for months and created a mysterious tape with a secret message for the final (maybe) posting.As fans continued to arrive on the YouTube channel, the online community coalesced around answering questions and ultimately promoting the book themselves. Neither agency nor client ever interacted with the fans after the initial launch.

The campaign ran longer than expected and because fans were so involved with the tapes and continued to ask for more content, we ultimately decided to produce one last tape with hidden content that was original and not in the book.

Overall, sales went up 140%.The average teen novel sells 14-15,000 units in a year; we did that in one month.When the campaign was initiated they had sold just 18,580 units, now they’ve sold 202,770.The book reached no.3 on the New York Times best seller list.