ALTERED NARRATIVES
How can Bookbeat stay the leading audiobook service as competition increases?
By standing for something bigger: The free word.
Censorship is increasing rapidly across the world. Books like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Call Me by Your Name, and The Hate U Give are being banned for reasons like “promotion of magic,” “queer love,” and “critique of racism.” Press freedom has suffered its sharpest fall in 50 years, according to The Guardian.
Censorship doesn’t just silence voices, it distorts stories. So BookBeat partners with PEN International, the global defender of free expression, to expose how easily narratives can be altered. Together, we turn censorship into something people can see, hear and feel.
By letting users experience censorship firsthand, we show what’s at stake when narratives are altered. When words disappear, someone must help voices be heard.
CLIENT: Bookbeat
AD: Valeria Gandich, Elsa Lyck
Copywriter: Fiona Östlund, Elsa Ekholm
Execution:
Swedish VPN-Hack: We give people in censored countries access to banned literature through a special VPN.
OOH: We show iconic books rewritten by censorship.
In-App Censorship: For a limited time, parts of BookBeat’s own content appear “censored”, (audio and visuals).
Radio: Silent radio spots that mimic what censorship erases.
Print: Newspaper ads that underline how fragile the free word becomes once we accept silence as normal
