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integrated concepts • igniting brands
13 Reasons Why
A friend at Penguin Books came to us and asked us to read a young adult book that she thought was powerful and had real potential but needed a push to get people to pay attention to it. We read it and agreed. The book was about a girl who had been bullied and committed suicide. She left behind a series of 13 tapes that explained her reasons why and in the process revealed a lot of people’s secrets.
Our idea was not to advertise it in a traditional sense but to find a way for kids to discover the book on their own, and start talking about it to each other. And that’s exactly what happened. Within 2 months it became #3 on the NYTimes best sellers list. It ultimately made it to #1.
This campaign 13 Reasons Why won a Cannes Lion, a Gold Effie and was a finalist for the Grand Effie. It was also recognized by the One Show Interactive awards. We brought this client and this project into Grey, hand picked a very small team to see it through, produced and shot the videos ourselves on our own time and ended up winning Grey’s first Cannes Lion in many years.