Amazon
Kindle and Books
AGENCY // Movement Strategy
ROLE // Associate Creative Director
YEAR // Spring 2025
Reigniting the Kindle Fandom
Amazon Kindle and Books needed a social refresh, so they turned to our agency for guidance, production, and growth. I led the creative team as associate creative director, selling ideas through to our client on a weekly basis, working with project managers and department leads to build ticketing and resource plans, and enforcing brand guidelines as we transitioned to a new look and feel.
Our diligence and communication paid off: content began to perform above benchmarks week-over-week, and a strong bond between the Amazon Books Editors and our team began to form.
ACCOUNT TEAM // Kemy Acacia, Elyse Runkle, Aimee Keenan, Kelly Engstrom
STRATEGY TEAM // Gabriela Benitez, Benjamin Butler, Dae Brummitt
CREATIVE TEAM // Lisa Norris, Sarah Wolff, Blake Fortin, Rajiv Smith-Mahabir, Emily Niksefat, Sergio Ramírez, Christina Rodriguez, Emily Chang, Kenedi Chapman
Campaign Context
The Client
Amazon Books encompasses both the initial Amazon offering – physical books – as well as the successful eReader side of the business: the Kindle devices and Kindle Unlimited Service.
They operate separate Instagram and Threads accounts for both Amazon Books and Amazon Kindle, catering to different audiences with different reading needs.
Our agency joined to support their small team of literary reviewers, The Amazon Editors, who shape the featured lists on the Amazon Books store page and appear on CBS Mornings to promote upcoming releases.
The Audience
BookTok (TikTok’s energized reading community) has experienced massive growth as the platform has matured. Content built around book recommendations, micro-reviews, book organization aesthetics, and generally freaking out over new releases experiences extremely high engagement in the form of longer, more in-depth comments. The algorithm loves, loves, loves these dense replies tagging each other and ranks the content accordingly. The Amazon Books audience was predominantly Millennial and older Gen Z women.
Amazon Kindle itself has a fandom of readers who still love to trade recommendations, but who care more about device ecosystems, features, and updates as it pertains to social engagement. Surprisingly, more men followed our Kindle accounts (60% vs 40%) than women, with the audience skewing toward the edges of an inverted parabola: young consumers and older consumers use Kindles more than the population in the middle of the distribution.
The Initial Challenge
From the outset, our goal was to transform the Amazon Books and Amazon Kindle Instagram and Threads accounts on a trio of fronts: design, production, and community management.
The Amazon team had growing demands placed upon it as more Amazon departments were looking to cross promote, more authors were looking to promote, and more content shifted from static images to influencer-like videos with motion graphics.
We were challenged with shifting the content mix to be 80% video, the majority of which needed to feature real people handling books and Kindle devices.
This would require monthly production days featuring a rotation of new locations, talent, and creative wrappers.
There was a lot to do, so we got down to it.
Amazon Book Sale key graphic and messaging
Campaign Creative
Our Real Challenge
Our team of editors, designers, copywriters, and strategists had to come up with a robust content plan while considering the dividing sentiment about the Amazon Books brand.
The giant online retailer has obviously affected independent bookstores during its rise to the top, and our team had to be deeply in tune with sensitivities about how we approached our content.
We weren’t a small bookstore. Our language shouldn’t act like we’re one.
Instead, we have a team of experts who give valuable recommendations, we offer some of the best value for power readers, and we’re involved in the online reading culture ourselves.
That’s what would lead us to success.
Our Approach
Conceptually, we needed every unique idea to support one of four pillars: Inspiration, Education, Entertainment, or Relation while be born from a place of shared connection: a memory from one’s reading journey growing up, a strange book-related habit one might have, or a recent conversation someone may have had about something they read.
I led weekly brainstorms to bring these concepts from mind to page, and then from page to slide for client presentation. I primarily sold them through on a weekly client status call, working through questions live with our point of contact.
Production-wise, we were led by VP of Production Sarah Wolff and Group CD Lisa Norris, who organized monthly production days at rented locations in Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York (honestly, it was more like twice a month when other campaign activations were considered.) Sarah formed small teams of three to be on site: one videographer, one producer, and a director.
Lisa, another fantastic ACD named Blake Fortin, and I hashed out the look and feel, concept build outs, and templated side of the equation.
Thank you Sarah, Lisa, and Blake for your guidance.
Our Output
We created more than 20 pieces of organic content monthly across both channels along with more than fourteen individual mini campaigns, including the Amazon Books Sale and Best Books of the Month so Far.
The Amazon Book Sale output included A/B testing four paid ad units across Threads and Meta platforms, an interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” game on Instagram Stories, and content shot live with an Editor in Seattle.
We were also always on the hunt for an opportunity for a quick-turn asset based on social conversations where it made sense and would have the most impact (i.e. rising NBA star Victor Wembanyama reading Brandon Sanderson’s ‘The Way of Kings’ before a game.)
“Best Books of 2025 So Far” branding and motion elements
@amazonkindle Instagram Reel Content
Relatable Reels
I led weekly concepting sessions with the goal of putting multiple Instagram Reels into production as the week progressed. We searched for relatable memories as the core of our content.
Product Integration
People who follow Amazon accounts welcome recommendations; that’s why they follow at the end of the day. Our goal was to relate to how our followers actually used these products at the end of the day. Often, we were crafting experiences build around ideal Kindle reading nooks.
Influencer Content
We partnered with influencers for monthly campaign production days, featuring new talent in a new city monthly.
@amazonkindle Instagram Reel Content
Big Ideas
We weren’t afraid to pitch ideas large and small, encompassing all reading styles and preferences.
Repeatable Formats
We collaborated with the Amazon Editors for monthly series of ‘best book’ recommendations.
Weird Like We Are
Of course, every reader has their idiosyncrasies, and so do we. We strove to integrate our strange reading habits into our creative, because we knew everyone has them.
@amazonbooks & @amazonkindle
Threads Posts
Q1+Q2 Results
15%
Increase in performance
Key “Best Books of the Month” Series
Wins
Producing at pace isn’t easy, and our team rose to the challenge, organizing three shoots in two cities in a little over one month, resulting in a strong suite of content to kick off Summer 2025.
Engagement and follower figures were beginning to show signs of consistent growth and the Kindle Threads account just needed a little extra cadence and love to kick-start the engagement it deserved.
Finally, our relationship with our client and the Amazon Editors continued to strengthen as we learned more about each other.
3x
Kindle Threads Engagement
After First Three Months
Learnings
Finding influencers who were the right fit for our paid campaigns was a challenge. The brand has a negative connotation among many online communities outside of the book market, and we found we had to go to where the user was to find success: people who do repeat Amazon reviews on TikTok and Reels, people who live in the Prime ecosystem, and readers with Kindle Unlimited. Starting there would have yielded better initial results in my opinion.
+20K
New Followers
On Books & Kindle
Instagram Accounts Combined
Final Takeaway
We all are unique readers. How we learned to read was unique. How we learned to love stories was unique. How we intertwine literature into our modern lives is unique.
Amazon Books and Kindle has the opportunity to be a leader in positive cultural impact while providing an opportunity of readers of all types to experience new stories.