Beyond the look of the cover, the touch of the pages, and the sight of the beckoning ink, the words that grab us from the beginning of a great book are a magical thing. What if those words came to life in everyday scenes, writ out before our eyes in curl, block and cursive until, surprise! You realize #YouJustStartedABook? When the team at Hustle tapped The Barkers to create a series of spots for the first ever Amazon Books campaign, that’s exactly where they went.

Executing on this simple, but oh-so-clever idea, The Barkers hid the text from the start of great stories in scenes where type would normally live, but out of context: In a bakery, a fashion ad and yoga parlor, on a video game screen, and more. Each spot builds to the big reveal at the end: #YouJustStartedABook. That, followed by Amazon’s invitation to “Read on, or read another.”

A mix of motion, stills, and graphic art (GFX), “this dream project was a truly integrated campaign with final work living everywhere in almost any ratio you could imagine,” says Chris. “Working in mixed media for the entirety of our careers, our knowledge of how to streamline production to capture motion and stills seamlessly, and in formats that give flexibility in post-production, was key:  No need to constantly redo shots for a crazy framing for social, etc.”

The Barkers worked closely with the team at Hustle to dial-in the look for the campaign. What started as a very cinematic approach moved towards a look that felt native online. “We wanted each piece to feel as if it had been made by a creator on the platform where it would live,” Chris explains. True to each vertical, that meant locked off match cuts for TikTok, stills with parallax, and single takes to showcase mad cake-decorating skills. Even though the spots would live in unique places, The Barkers wanted the entire campaign to be cohesive. “When Hustle told us they loved the way our work, “looked like a smile,” we knew we’d hit the mark, finding the feeling that fit with Amazon’s trademark smile logo.”

While this wasn’t The Barkers’ first shoot during COVID, it was truly the one that dialed the duo in the tightest. With the agency located in LA and Chicago, and Amazon in Seattle, everything was done remotely. “We can honestly say this was one of the most collaborative shoots we’ve ever done,” says Chris. “We moved fast. Calls were made on time. And our agency and client stayed on point, staving off Zoom exhaustion through four days of both on-location and in-studio shoots that had us all over Chicago constantly bouncing between a live stream from our Alexa Mini and tethered stills camera.”