On World Book and Copyright Day (23 April), Krakow UNESCO City of Literature launched a resistance movement against not reading. The result? Over a million uses of the new hashtag in two days and over a thousand spontaneous posts from readers from Poland and the world.
“This Literature Deserves Reading” (#TLDRxP) – this was the slogan on the international resistance movement against reading launched by Krakow. The aim of the campaign was to popularise the hashtag with which readers across the world can express their support and recommend other books worth reading. The project authors also wanted to fight against not reading, which is what the original meaning of the TLDR acronym means: “too long, didn’t read”.
On the first day of the campaign, the new hashtag reached nearly a million people on social media (data from Brand24). The campaign was supported by the biggest published in the country, journalists, authors, people of culture and art, popular websites, as well as a wide circle of friends and partners. Among them were Krystyna Janda, Łona, Michał Nogaś, Łukasz Orbitowski, Wojciech Orliński, Dawid Podsiadło, Filip Springer, Marcin Wicha, as well as the Book Institute, Tygodnik Powszechny, Dwutygodnik, TOK FM, Gazeta.pl, Nagłówki nie do ogarnięcia, ASZ Dziennik, CD Projekt, Allegro and Woblink.
The campaign is maintained in the style of a secret resistance movement; therefore, more partners did not indicate the website address in their posts. Internet users who searched for the meaning of the TLDRxP phrase in a search engine, found an ad for the page and learned about the campaign that way. The AdWords campaign is also targeted at users from around the world, who do not know about the campaign, but search for phrases TLDR and TL;DR.
“TLDRxP” also serves as a purchase code for shopping in the online bookstores of the biggest Polish publishes, who offered special discounts for the purposes of the campaign. The project is also supported by bookmarks, used to mark good books and recommend them online.
“Book lovers have not had a universal tool for book recommendation until now”, says Izabela Helbin, Director of the Krakow Festival Office, operator of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature programme. “We decided that #TLDRxP would become a world symbol of quality and encourage recommending valuable books, as well as reading itself. The enormous reach in the first days of the campaign lets us hope that we will achieve this, and the new, positive meaning of the TLDRxP phrase will permanently replace its old, negative message”.
You can track the battle on the campaign’s website: www.tldrxp.org
The organiser of the campaign is the Krakow Festival Office, operator of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature programme.
The creative concept was developed by Marcin Sikorski, copywriter and editor of the “Nagłówki nie do ogarnięcia” service.
Visual identification was designed by Daniel Dziuba.
Project coordination was handled by Marcin Sikorski and Jakub Kulasa (Krakow Festival Office.
A full list of Partners and Ambassadors of the campaign can be found on the website.