The landscape that businesses need to navigate is constantly changing with restrictions that evolve at a rapid pace. Therefore, it’s vital for their advertisers to act swiftly and effectively with messaging that resonates with their consumers. It can be incredibly daunting for agencies to deliver quality advertising once you factor in the challenges that clients and small businesses face when relying on in-store purchases. Dieste and DJNR Interactive were able to traverse these troubled waters with a clever idea and swift implementation for a beloved bookstore in the Dallas Bishop Arts District.

To overcome the challenge that customers were no longer able to physically come into the store to buy books, Dieste came up with the idea to rethink a campaign they ran for the store back in the fall. That campaign originally sold books as a travel experience and enticed customers with a complimentary beverage to drive them into the store. The reimagined campaign turned that concept into a prank that had the customers and followers of Wild Detectives believe that the bookstore was now becoming a travel agency. This seemingly strange business decision was only promoted through organic social posting and email blasts. Their audience quickly realized that it wasn’t a travel site but a way to buy books online that are set in the location they wanted to visit. The campaign highlights this with lines such as “Done with homeschooling - Escape to Tokyo.” Thanks to DJNR’s re-purposing of the site for direct sales online customers could easily place an order from the “travel website” to book their dream trip via the story of a book based in that location.

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Dieste’s prank was seamlessly pulled off and the positive reactions were overwhelming. Their followers exhaled a collective sigh of relief and admitted they “fell for this soo hard!” and “I've been looking to visit the store for months. I thought I missed my chance.” Many others still feeling the sting said they couldn’t help but love the idea saying “Oh, y'all are cruel and April 1st was...what, three months ago? I'm gonna order a book now.” Since the campaign launched just over a week ago, it has since been highlighted by both D Magazine and Adweek.

Thanks to the clever reimagining of a concept from Dieste, and DJNR’s fast action to update the campaign’s website, the project was able to deliver over a 200% increase in online sales and over 30,000 unique visitors for the Wild Detectives Bookstore. Dieste’s clever idea and DJNR Interactive’s website redesign for online sales was a success with zero ad spend. The next steps will be to add more “destinations” and upgrade the site to help generate more revenue from each purchase.

DJNR’s incredibly talented Austin based team delivered this headline-worthy project and we can’t help but take pride in the work our Platinum-Level Annual Sponsor does. If you’re an agency looking for a digital partner to execute pixel perfect concepts then check out what DJNR can do for you at https://weare.djnr.net/

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