How do you get the tech-savvy, keypad crunching youth to get to read a book! A Dallas book bar and store, The Wild Detectives, had just the right idea.

The book store launched a campaign in September 2016, clickbaiting their audience into reading some of the best classics ever written. The began uploading copyright-free novels on Medium, and then shared it on their Facebook page with extremely clickbaiting headlines.

What the brand likes to call “Litbait”, went all out to turn age-old classics into something this generation loves. Subsequently, The Picture of Dorian Grey became “British guy dies after selfie gone wrong”, Romeo and Juliet was shared with “Teenage girl tricked boyfriend into killing himself”, The Scarlet Letter was “When it’s OKAY to slut shame single mothers”.

On clicking on the blog link, users were directed to a blog post which contained the entire text of the novel.

Conceptualised by advertising company, Dieste Launched on the occasion of National Read a Book Day. The Litbait video concluded with “You fell for the bait, now fall for the book”.

According to a report by Adweek, the Litbait campaign resulted in 14,000 percent boost in site traffic and 150 percent more post engagement on Facebook. The entire campaign was compiled in a Case Study and published on YouTube, the video having received 772 views.

What worked?

• The brand and the agency managed to utilise clickbait for what it is, justifying the concept for the first time probably.
• The entire campaign was based on basics, functioning on ingrained elements of Facebook with support from Long Reads and Medium.
• The campaign was in sync with the statistics in America then, 65 percent of American readers still read at least one book in print in 12 months, giving the brand a ready target audience, who just need a push towards reading the vast collection of bindings out there.

Litbait is a classic example of sticking to basics for a successful and creative campaign.