Never Have I Read

With social media accelerating the demand for fast entertainment, literature is rapidly losing ground among younger audiences. Penguin Books posed a provocative question: how can we reignite the love for reading in a generation driven by immediacy, shared experiences, and pop culture?

The challenge was to reframe reading, not as a solitary, passive act, but as an engaging, social catalyst. The solution had to be disruptive, accessible, and emotionally resonant.

We used lateral thinking strategies to deconstruct the traditional perception of books and reposition literature as a cultural experience.

Our insight: storytelling already fuels the content people love, from TikToks to party games. So why not embed literature within those formats?

We transformed the act of reading into a social ritual by designing Never Have I Read: a game where real literature sparks bold, funny, and relatable conversations.

The strategy focused on cultural placement, not just what the product is, but where and how it lives. The goal was to make reading feel modern, shareable, and impossible to ignore.

We built NHIR as a hybrid between party game and literary gateway:

• A deck-based game with prompts derived from real book plots and characters;

• A striking name, “Never Have I Read”, playful, memorable, and inherently viral;

• A digital-first campaign designed to live on Instagram and TikTok;

• A social media filter that invites users to answer game prompts in real-time and go viral;

• A tone of voice that blends wit with cultural relevance.

Every design and communication choice aimed to build curiosity, social traction, and emotional connection to books without ever preaching about reading.

NHIR won the D&AD New Blood Award in 2022, recognised for its originality, strategic thinking, and cultural relevance.

The project has been celebrated as a fresh way to connect young adults to literature through play, conversation, and shared experience.

It demonstrated the power of merging publishing with entertainment, creating a product that transcends formats and speaks the language of a generation.

1. When a format feels outdated, shift the context, not the content.

2. Reading doesn’t need to compete with entertainment.. it can become it.

3. The right insight, paired with bold cultural strategy, can turn an age-old habit into a viral phenomenon.