Reading has been experiencing a cultural moment, but most of the industry’s digital brands feel interchangeable. Everand, subscription reading service from Scribd, Inc., was built on the idea that reading is a deeply personal, judgement-free activity.
Expanding on our 2025 Shorty Award-winning Everything Club, we set out to test how community could be built not just online, but at a local level. And whether brand storytelling could shift awareness for a new, smaller brand competing with category giants. The result was “Read Every Which Way,” Everand’s first-ever brand marketing campaign.
We chose Portland, OR as our pilot market. Internal branded search data identified Portland as a city with a high interest in reading and offerings like ours. Its independent culture and strong reading scene – home to the iconic Powell’s bookstore – made it the perfect place to show up for readers, from the street to their commute to their social feeds.
Our challenge: Make a digital brand feel tangible and credible on a lean budget in a space dominated by larger competitors, and prove community can drive real impact.
Our goals:
Our strategy: Meet readers where they are. Pair dense out-of-home with social amplification and participatory activations to promote sharing.
We designed Read Every Which Way to make a digital service feel tangible, credible, and community-driven. Our goal was simple: if Everand could meet readers in the real world, we could spark curiosity that builds connection, and turn local engagement into measurable brand lift.
The Idea
“Read Every Which Way” reimagined reading as a reflection of individuality and everyday life.
We’ve always been aware of a stigma around reading choices. In fact, this was a core insight we uncovered while building the Everand brand and one we've been leaning into since. We’ve focused on breaking through those barriers and empowering readers to read what they want, how they want, when they want. It’s our core guiding principle. "Read Every Which Way" is a natural extension of that principle.
Creativity
The campaign extended Everand’s community-driven ethos into physical spaces, encouraging people to celebrate the many ways they engage with stories. Bright yellow visuals and our ampersand logo unified the campaign across every surface.
We invited a mix of Everything Club creators and Portland-based influencers, who documented the full weekend of events. Their authentic coverage amplified reach and helped position Everand in the city’s creative beat.
OOH
For four weeks, Portland became our canvas. A network of 170 out-of-home placements spanned the city. With a lean budget, the buy emphasized ubiquity across core neighborhoods: billboards, bus wraps, window units, sidewalk stencils, each localized to Portland’s culture and location. Lines like “Romantasy on Hawthorne & Ghost Stories on Alberta” brought a subtle recognition that only locals would catch.
Digital
OOH was paired with a layered digital plan that mirrored this sense of discovery. Paid social and native creative went live as people encountered the campaign in real life, ensuring that what appeared on the street surfaced in their feeds within hours. Creative leaned into bold, clear messaging to cement name recognition while showcasing the breadth of content on the platform.
Experiential
To make a digital brand feel human, we designed three core activations:
Integration
The campaign worked because no element stood alone. OOH built intrigue, social built momentum, and live experiences fostered participation. The mix balanced scale with intimacy and demonstrated that a digital subscription can stage a citywide experiential takeover that traveled online.
Why This Stood Out
In an industry that often equates scale with success, Read Every Which Way proved that depth of connection can achieve the same, showing that a lean challenger can win attention not by shouting louder, but by speaking like a local and celebrating what people love to do: read.
"Read Every Which Way" delivered rapid, measurable results in awareness, engagement and local market activity, proving community storytelling can drive digital discovery.
Awareness and Consideration
Social
Experiential Impact
Outcomes and Learnings
Everand shifted from little-known to visible and talked about in Portland in just four weeks. The work proved that a culture-first, community-centered approach can move discovery and consideration for a digital reading service, providing a scalable playbook for future markets.
The campaign ultimately proved our hypothesis that when you meet readers where they are, they show up.
