CLIENT:
PROJECTS:
Technology Startup - New publishing house mememe Press
OUR ROLE:
Concept Design, Branding, Creative Strategy, Product development, eCommerce/Shopper, Illustration, Art Direction, Web design, Marketing, EDM, Social Media, Project management, SEO, SEM
mememe Press is the brainchild of Spring in Alaska founders Noa and Keren. A technology startup focusing on "print on demand", we were looking to create a vehicle to expand our capabilities of personalised and generative storytelling on one hand and explore easy, scalable distribution of sustainably printed content globally (!!) on the other. To be able to support its vision, we created our own unique platform routing digital resources and assets to the nearest-to-user print location through a network of global partners.
In a nutshell - with mememe Press we created a technology bridge between content, technology and distribution strategy.
At the experiments work table here at Spring in Alaska (the place were crazy ideas see life and learning, insights and relationships trickle onwards to our consultancy work) we've been exploring generative design and story telling through a series of digital projects dating back to 2007.
In 2017, personalisation had become a mainstay of consumer culture and print on demand had matured as an industry - we were keen to explore generative, personalised story telling that could leap off the screen into real-life books. It didn't hurt that our daughter (4 at the time) LOVED books and we loved that she loved them.
We decided to throw our hat in the ring, founding a new-world publishing company and mememe Press was born.
Sounds quick but the 'gestation period' was actually FULL of technical challenges and relationship building (human challenges?) with different players - HP in Israel (middle of the night conference calls are always fun), UK printers in London and a breathtaking ride in a little twin engine plane to Glen Iris to woo our Australian printers to be. When the 'baby' was born we had our first title written by award winning children's authors (more on that below) and a networked system geared to allow anyone, almost anywhere in the world to purchase and personlaise their own picture book, have it automatically printed close to their home, in high quality (soft or hard cover) and delivered to their door. It worked! and it was grand! (note: we say WAS because the site is currently undergoing some snazzy upgrades so keep an eye out for what's next).
Building the product is just the beginning though (which is what we tell our clients and we're actually right about this). After we finished the technical build, the joy of marketing was a journey unto itself with earned, and paid media working (and sweating and crying) in tandem to get the word out to different markets.
Every family’s different –
not one of them the same.
Each child is special and unique
Just like <YOUR KID> and <HER/HIS/THEIR> special name.
This story is all about <YOUR KID>
She’s the star of this small book.
To follow her adventures,
peep inside and have a look.
Our first title was written by Kate and Jol Temple (award winning Australian authors) and brilliantly illustrated by Christopher Cooper (one of the most talented and overall lovely illustrators we've ever worked with).
The special thing about this book is that it can be personalised to feature different family constelations. Whether the family has two mums, a cat and an uncle or a grandma and five sisters - the story changes to acomodate.
Overall the number of different family types the book could represent exceeds 12,000.
Ready or Not Here Comes YOU has sold to families in over 20 countries and has gifted so many kids with that magic experience of seeing a family JUST LIKE theirs, romping around in a picture book.
Wrong or no access token.
HERE'S A FUNNY STORY:
We sent one of our personalised books to Kim Kardashian as a gift for the birth of her 4th child. We even included grandma's nickname (because - the internet).
So then Kim posted about it to her (at the time) 140 million followers. And the rest, as they say, is history.
IT'S PRETTY FANCY!
We used; Python, PHP, WordPress, Angular, Javascript, API, headless CMS, WooCommerce, Payment Gateway, Queue Management System, AWS, JSON
4 bitbucket repositories.
1,384,000 lines of code.
12 API integrations.
To make the book available on 5 continents with seamless, worldwide shipping and distribution.
Address
74 Applebee St. St Peters, NSW 2044
P: +61 2 9550 4868
E: hello@springinalaska.com.au