It Starts With Us: Activations In UK And Italy
It starts with us follows the story of main characters Atlas and Lily attempting to rekindle the love they felt for each other as teenagers, but dealing with the repercussions their love may have now as adults.
Since it was a sequel to It Ends With Us, which was hugely successful worldwide, all Colleen Hoover fans were waiting for this title to come out, so it was a perfect occasion for us to plan a big UK activation.
Pre-awareness campaign in the UK
Our excitement for this book started way back in March 2022 when the cover was released for It Starts With Us. To build excitement we tasked 10 of our favourite UK based BookTokers to tell us why they loved It Ends With Us, revealing the new cover at the end of the video. We also released a suite of cover reveal content on our page to coincide with the creator videos.
100-participant Readalong
To mark the UK publication on 18th October we gathered 100 CoHo fans on Instagram with a collective follower count of over 250,000 and ran a mega Readalong kicking off on publication day with lots of branded POS provided by the client. This included tissues, stickers and creative bingo cards with challenges on - these were in addition to our own daily challenges and reading prompts.
We had our readers in 4 DM groups of 25 people, each sharing their Instagram content and thoughts about the book and they were actively encouraged to tag each other in all activities to extend the reach of the project. Each day our readers had a different prompt relating to the book and a creative challenge to complete. These can be found here.
The BeReal element
As part of the activity, we ran a competition for the participants to feature their book in as many of their BeReal memories as possible over the course of the Readalong, with each memory being an entry into a raffle to win a stack of Simon and Schuster titles. This meant that the community were carrying the book around with them in case the notification for BeReal went off!
All the way across Europe
Meanwhile, in Italy, we knew we had the wonderful opportunity to engage an extremely loyal community of Italian BookTokers and Bookstagrammers.
We worked strategically, maximising international buzz and launching the pre-order campaign for the Italian edition on the 18th October to coincide with the UK release. We devised bespoke retail initiatives to ensure widespread trade support across all retailers, with exclusive content and a branded journal utilised as pre-order incentives.
Pre-awareness campaign
The TikTok activity was carefully managed in the pre-awareness stage, with a call-out to find Colleen Hoover Italian Ambassadors. We asked the Italian BookTok community to post a video telling us why they loved Colleen Hooverโฆ without telling us!
The content creators who responded to the call-out were entered into a prize-draw to win 1 out of 10 early copies of It starts with us, for a VIP reading experience. This resulted in high-quality organic content across all social media platforms, with TikTok videos shared organically on Instagram as well.
Keeping the momentum
To keep the Ambassadors engaged from October to January, we ran a number of initiatives for them to be able to keep posting content until the book came out, such as:
Gift a Friend: we launched a competition encouraging them to vlog their experience re-reading It ends with us, tabbing their favourite passages and adding notes and comments to the book before passing it to a friend whoโd never read Colleen Hoover before;
POV videos: we asked them to share their theories on the It starts with us plotline, with POV videos of Atlas, Lily and Ryle.
Content teasing initiatives
Cover Reveal - we sent out a jigsaw puzzle of the Italian covers to the ambassadors and asked them to build them in their TikTok videos;
Early Extract - we seeded a short extract as โcaptionsโ across different TikTok accounts;
Driving Pre-orders - the ambassadors received a sneak preview of the branded journal (pre-order incentive) and were asked to create a video where they showed it to their community and explained the pre-order mechanic;
A Bespoke Landing Page - we created a bespoke website offering all the touchpoints for the pre-orders, with information on the different options offered to readers. If they pre-ordered their copy on Amazon, Mondadoristore.it, IBS.it or Feltrinelli.it they received a QR code leading to the exclusive Colleen Hoover novella - Maybe Not. If they pre-ordered their copy in a physical Mondadori Store they received the Colleen Hoover branded journal for 2023.
Preview readings
At the end of December, 10 VIP BookTokers and 10 VIP Bookstagrammers received early copies of the book, which resulted in high-quality organic content on TikTok and Instagram.
The Instagram VIPs were then in charge of leading 5 separate Instagram DM Groups, in preparation of the 100-participant online Readalong on publication in January.
The activity with the 10 VIP BookTokers culminated in a double-page spread in Robinson, the cultural supplement of La Repubblica, the second most-read newspaper in Italy.
100-person Readalong
To mark publication date on the 10th January, we engaged 100 Italian-based Bookstagrammers and BookTokers, with a collective follower count of over 400,000, to take part in a 100-participant Readalong.
Prior to kick-off, handles of all the influencers involved were shared among participants and detailed guidelines provided.
The activation took place over 5 days. Participants were given suggested reading each day with key quotes from the book, and were encouraged to tag the other participants and to discuss their thoughts and opinions. Each day was focused on a specific aspect of the book and participants were given discussion points to share in the DM Group, on Stories, with Reels
and with TikTok creative challenges.
Participants were also included in Instagram DM groups and each day we sent check-in messages to keep them on track.
The digital prompts were based on the themes identified in the book, with a creative challenge and a discussion point for each of them. Creative challenges can be foundhere.
The BeReal element
As part of the activity, in conjunction with the activation Simon & Schuster ran in the UK, we encouraged people to share their It starts with us BeReals with us.
We encouraged the community to take the book out with them and take a snap wherever they were. We then created a TikTok video for our channel, following one of the latest trends, where these pieces of content were shared. You can watch it here.
It Starts With Us (IT) in numbers
30 TikTok Ambassadors with a collective follower count of 713,131, engaged in the pre-awareness phase;
100 Bookstragrammers and BookTokers with a collective follower count of 439,932, taking part in the collective reading experience on publication;
239 posts shared on Instagram with an engagement rate of 12.18%;
1,405 IG stories with estimated 871,995 views;
161 Reels;
13,737 post saves;
964 people who bought the book thanks to the campaign;
11,188 site sessions on the bespoke website created for the pre-order.