“Time to Read” encourages us to read instead of looking at social networks

Dubai’s Kinokuniya Bookstore represents how many books we could read with the time we spend on social media.

Great advertising campaigns are universal. It does not matter the sector, the product or the country that, when an advertising campaign is original, is transversal. This is the case of the action carried out by a bookstore in Dubai, which has increased its sales significantly with this simple proposal.

After an investigation of citizens of the United Arab Emirates to find out how much time they spent on social networks, the results were enlightening. From them they launched this ad campaign.

“Time to Read” is the title of the campaign carried out by Saatchi&Saatchi Middle East for the bookstore of the Japanese chain Kinokuniya in Dubai. The idea? show how many books could be read with the time we spend on social networks.

And it is that the study revealed that the average weekly time spent on social networks is 8 hours. To make it more eye-catching, the campaign creators split that time between existing social networks. This time it became books that an average person could read. The results were amazing: 43 books with time spent on Instagram, 35 on Facebook, 22 on Twitter, and 42 on TikTok and YouTube.

The way to make these figures visible was carried out in the bookstore facilities and in some points in Dubai. These column charts were represented as stacks of books that were the same color and that people could flip through. Likewise, the bookstore offered a discount from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., the period of the day when there is the greatest traffic on social networks.

The “Time to Read” campaign brought an increase of 16% to the bookstore and 28% over the previous year. It also generated a 50% increase in interactions and coverage in the media.

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