São Paulo's Mayor sparked controversy when he had the city paint over some of the most famous street art in the world. Our team saw it as a blank slate for Kindle to make a statement. We would promote an art form that was impossible to erase: storytelling.

We used the now infamous gray wall as our canvas to project quotes from famous works of literature, including 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. We called out the Mayor’s actions – “Have they covered the city in gray? We have covered the gray with stories” — and signed our illuminated graffiti with #MovedByStories.

We filmed the stunt, launched the video on social media, and waited for the Mayor to respond. When he did it, we were ready to announce a free e-book download to every person in São Paulo.

We filmed Kindle’s “literary takeover” of the gray wall, and launched the provocative video over the weekend. The Mayor’s reply came fast and furious: his own video questioning Amazon’s motives. Now the story spread across Brazil — in print, television, radio and social media.

So Mayor Doria publically asked the company to donate on behalf of city hall, in a clear attempt to kidnap our narrative. But we had everything set. Within two hours, we had a video of Amazon announcing the donation of one e-book to all 12 million residents of the city, besides donation of Kindle devices to NGOs partners of Amazon.

The Mayor and his allies kept feeding the news cycle, calling out Amazon, asking for the campaign to be taken off the air, and even launching virtual attacks on our agency and other collaborators.

In other words, it went perfectly.

In a summary of results, The Huffington Post put it best: “In the feud between Amazon and the Mayor, the victorious one was the reader.”

Media Outputs

From influential social media shout-outs, to ongoing coverage from top-tier global outlets, “Kindle Stories Over Grey” delivered an engaging narrative and major earned media impressions (and that’s not including the bot army hired to attack the campaign).

Business Outcomes

1+ million eBooks downloaded in only 3 days

Kindle became the #1 downloaded app on Apple Store and Play Store

Kindle app downloads increased 70% over the year

Kindle device sales increased 12% monthly

Because of the negative publicity, the Mayor stopped destroying the street art of São Paulo. He admitted he has misjudged the gray mural episode and after that, announced graffiti projects in different areas of the city.