The New York Public Library’s Insta Novels: A Case Study

Situation

Nearly every generation in recorded history has grown up in a world in which books are the primary medium for information and quiet entertainment. However, in an era dominated by screens and digital media, libraries are becoming increasingly obsolete. This is especially true for young people of Generation Y and Z, who have largely replaced the pastime of visiting a library or reading books for pleasure with the use of smartphones and vastly stimulating digital entertainment. In spite of this, many still wholeheartedly believe in the importance of reading books and are determined to not let this tradition die out. Enter the New York Public Library (NYPL), an organization that has been at the heart of New York’s intellectual fabric for over 120 years and one that isn’t quite ready to give up on getting young people excited to read books.

Objectives

In 2018 the NYPL teamed up with award-winning New York creative company Mother in order to craft a campaign with a straightforward underlying premise — inspire a disengaged young audience to read books. In order to thrive in a digital age, the NYPL needed to build meaningful and long-lasting relationships with people of a digital generation. With this in mind, the NYPL set out with the goal of inspiring community, curiosity, and reverence for the written word.

Target Audience

The target audience of this campaign was young people of Generation Y (Millennials) and particularly Z. Within this demographic, gender or specific age was not relevant, although the campaign did aim specifically to garner the attention of young people who were not already readers in some capacity. In 2018 it was found that a third of teenagers don’t read books for pleasure anymore — and that figure is only increasing (Ducharme, 2018). With a world of instant entertainment at their fingertips, many Gen Zers are skipping the library in favor of activities that are more accommodating to diminishing attention spans. The Insta Novels campaign from the NYPL capitalized on the popularity of Instagram and its stories feature among Gen Z as it’s reported that 73% of teens use the platform and about 500 million stories are viewed per day (Mother, 2019).

Strategy, Creative Theme, & Execution

With increasingly short attention spans and eyes that are frequently glued to digital devices, Gen Z’s obsession with social media was first seen as the enemy of such an initiative by the NYPL. Quickly enough though, Mother realized that the solution lay in the problem. Mother and the NYPL thought outside of the box in order to facilitate awareness and excitement about books by utilizing Instagram to connect with this young audience where they’re most at home. Through knowledge of the influence that social media content holds over Gen Z and the decision that social media could indeed be an ally for the NYPL, Mother’s campaign began to take shape.

The Insta Novels campaign created a digital library specially designed to engage a young audience of Instagram users. Social media isn’t disappearing any time soon nor are its constituents, thus, rather than trying to bring young people to the library - Mother decided “we must bring the library to them” (Mother, 2019). Rather than trying to entice the audience to check out titles at the library or swipe up on links to the NYPL’s virtual catalog, the creative agency came up with a bold idea to upload full-length novels directly to social media. As Instagram is a platform designed around visual posts, implementing full-length novels in a digestible manner was a major focus of this campaign. As a result, the team chose to utilize Instagram’s story feature for its full-screen layout, ability to host up to 100 individual posts within a single “story” at once, and an overall intuitive feeling for reading literature. To start, the NYPL uploaded three renowned titles - The Yellow Wallpaper, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and The Raven. The organization followed up by expanding its digital library to include Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Of course, in trying to engage an audience like Gen Z, these Insta Novels needed to be attractive and engaging. In order to accomplish this, Mother joined forces with popular artists and animators on the platform in order to craft appealing cover art, graphics, and animations that fit the theme of each individual novel. Each novel features a uniquely animated cover graphic that functions as a trailer of sorts, occasional animations throughout the text, and creatively designed thumb rests in the bottom right-hand corner that change with each page (so as to create a flip-book effect on the whole). For those who are unfamiliar with Instagram stories, Instagram “turns the page for you” so in order to pause on a page/slide one must tap and hold the screen.

In addition to visually-appealing graphics and animations, the team also carefully designed the core components of each page to create the most enjoyable experience possible for users. The Georgia typeface was chosen as it “pays homage to the history of the written word” (Mother, 2019), page numbers were conveniently placed in the top-right hand corner, and a warmer white background color was chosen to be easier on the eyes and feel more like a real paperback novel. 

Results

After launching on August 22nd, 2018, the Insta Novels campaign proved to be a success. Within the first 24 hours, the NYPL Instagram climbed 700% (13,000) in followers (Nudd, 2019). As of 11 months later, 300,000 people had read the Insta Novels and the page had gained 161,000 new followers. It’s important to note that although this campaign had a production budget of $15,000 to pay artists, etc., the organization spent $0 dollars on media and was able to garner an estimated $7.1m in earned media impressions (Mother, 2019).

The campaign not only inspired Gen Zers to engage with literature but sparked dialogue among a host of individuals and institutions about the importance of reading and books. Insta Novels received praise and attention from numerous international media outlets such as New York Times, BBC, and NBC. In addition to widespread recognition, educators and organizations reached out to the New York Public Library to use the novels in their curriculum. This campaign even caught the attention of Instagram, as Mother noted being in talks with the platform about making such a function a permanent feature.

Additionally, Insta Novels garnered several awards in 2019. It won gold for the Jay Chiat Connection Strategy category, and four Clio awards for Innovation, Digital/Mobile & Social Media Technique, Social Media, and Design.

Analysis

The New York Public Library’s willingness to accept social media’s role in society and take advantage of that rather than try to fight against it was a brilliant decision and undoubtedly instrumental to successfully actualizing the idea of engaging a Gen Z audience. Mother and the NYPL really studied their target audience prior to crafting a plan for execution. Through garnering in-depth insight about trends and coming to the realization that Gen Z still very much engages with stories, just through different mediums, Mother was able to outline a campaign with a solid foundation and meaningful tactics.

This campaign caught my eye because of its uniqueness. As someone who read for pleasure fervently as a teenager but rarely does anymore, the prospect of having full-text books pushed to my social media feed is enticing. The concept of a free digital library on Gen Z’s most popular social media platform is genius and I feel that the creative design and execution of the campaign were excellent. The title slides function as a trailer, with enticing animations and music that aims to envelop potential readers with the world of each text. Each book has animated pages sprinkled throughout that further bring the story to life. Mother and the NYPL adapted and modernized these classic literary works in all the right ways to foster curiosity among younger audiences.

Although this campaign saw success in the metrics that were measurable, it seems that the NYPL chose to not further campaign development, although the novels are still available on its Instagram page. Personally, I would like to have seen a continuation of this initiative through uploading more novels and continuing to promote them. I believe there are plenty of opportunities for partnering with influencers and artists on the platform in order to further the goal of inspiring teenagers to get involved with books.

Works

Ducharme, J. (2018, August 20). A third of teenagers don't read books for Pleasure Anymore. Retrieved from https://time.com/5371053/teenagers-books-social-media/#:~:text=A%20third%20of%20U.S.%20teenagers,re%20too%20busy%20watching%20TV.

Mother. (2019, June). The New York Public Library Insta Novels. Retrieved from |
https://www.aaaa.org/index.php?checkfileaccess=/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GOLD_Mother_NYPL-Taking-the-Library-out-of-the-Library.pdf

Nudd, T. (2019, June 20). The transformative craft of MOTHER'S 'Insta Novels' for the
New York public library. Retrieved from
https://musebycl.io/muse-canne... Promotional Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnWPueJnD9I&ab_channel=MotherUSA