Every year, the list of endangered species grows with thousands of new names. In addition to the Asian elephant in Borneo, the giant lizard or the lemur in Madagascar, we also have a species of people in danger: readers. This endangered species is not officially certified, but we need to talk about it as much as possible, so that it does not become a museum exhibit. As did those from Saatchi Creative Hub and the publishing house Restlessness through the campaign “The Reader – A New Endangered Species”.
At the National Museum of Natural History “Grigore Antipa” a temporary exhibition of living statues took place last weekend, where you could admire various types of readers, including the foreign fiction reader, the SF/Fantasy reader, the Romanian fiction reader, or the essay reader. Each reader exhibit was accompanied by information about the habits and main characteristics of that species and a QR code leading to the website nemira.ro/speciidecititori.
I talked to Eli Badicaeditor & coordinator of the Nemira imprint, Christian PetreSenior Copywriter Saatchi Creative Hub, and Robert ȘopârlacheSenior Art Director Saatchi Creative Hub, about the idea behind the campaign and the survival of this species, which deserves protection.
“We, the readers, are on the verge of extinction. And we will all end up as exhibits at the museum at this rate. But the exhibition at the Antipa Museum was just the beginning of the initiative. Our mission is to find our readers in the country and protect them “, says Cristiana.
Those who want to help protect the reader species can explore the Map of Reader Reserves and mark the places where readers still find refuge.
Why is it important for this species to survive, how can we protect its habitat and what role do books play in human evolution, I tell, in the following lines, Eli Badica,Christian Petre and Robert Șopârlache.
In search of lost readers
Robert: Guess who ranks penultimate in Europe in reading. Exact. Romania. So last year, together with the Nemira publishing house, we started this process of finding creative solutions to sound the alarm on this topic. We managed to do this through the Bookvertising campaign, awarded nationally and internationally, at the end of which we put the first public interest message encouraging reading on TV. But advertising cannot save the world, and the problem persists, with the number of readers in our country constantly decreasing.
Brieful
Robert: This year we again sat down at the table with the people from Nemira and gave ourselves the same theme: “The world doesn’t read. What else can we do to change this?”. That’s what the brief was about. Generic enough to make it extremely difficult as well. So we needed a tension to start from, an enemy.
Brainstormingul
Christian: We had many brainstorming sessions. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Ideas on this have been made. I also had a big disclaimer. Zero budget. A rather complicated equation. But at some point this thought came. “Seeing a man with a book in his hand is a Rarity. Everyone is sitting with the PHONE in their hand”. Good. We have the enemy. The digital world. Social media. And that helped us formulate the idea.
In an increasingly digital world, readers are an endangered species. The client resonated with this from the start, he started building on the idea and from there we shared our to-dos and everyone pushed hard to make the exhibition in Antipa happen. That was another hop. Do the people at the museum want to join the initiative or not? Yes, they were extremely open and enthusiastic.
Collaboration with the Antipa Museum
Eli: In short, wonderful – and that’s really not a diplomatic answer. They embraced from the first campaign and joined us with great enthusiasm. We had constant support from the team at Antipa, from every angle you could think of, from the implementation of the idea and the choice of the spaces in the museum where the readers were to be placed, to the online presence, respectively social media.
SIDE
Eli: We received so many positive reactions that we can only be grateful for all this support and for the solidarity with the idea of the campaign, which we constantly felt.
First, on the spot, on the weekend of July 27-28, when almost three thousand people crossed the threshold of the museum and came across our atypical exhibition and its message. Some remained thoughtful in front of the readers-living exhibits, others interacted with them – a little girl, for example, asked them if they were real; a lady wanted to know if that person recommended the book she was reading, because she seemed “too” engrossed in reading; a little boy wanted to sit on the armchair next to the exposed reader, and he would read to him, etc. -, some took selfies with the exhibits, because they thought it was a novel idea to promote the habit of reading and to raise the alarm (still) and wanted to have a memory of the moment, others debated the topic right there – for example, starting a discussion about possible reasons why readers can be seen as endangered species or about what we should do in the future to prevent the custom from disappearing –, some followed the example of the exhibits and read a few pages alongside them (either borrowing a book from those on display or taking their own volume out of their luggage), others took advantage of context to give the exhibits as an example – a grandmother, for example, called her grandson to see what will happen if we do not read more.
Then, I received tens, hundreds of messages from people in the country or from the diaspora, public figures or simply passionate readers, emotional lines, with a core, of congratulations and encouragement, basically.
We also had splendid reactions from the readers-exhibits, who were very happy to be part of this story, who liked to let themselves be drawn into a book while transmitting, through reading, a value they care about very cool, who were happy to chat with visitors about the books.
All those listed are just some clippings from the two full days at Antipa. Every reaction counted, and together they fueled our hopes and idealism and gave us the energy to keep going.
The campaign message
Christian: A pretty straightforward one. We, the readers, are on the verge of extinction. And we’ll all end up as exhibits at the museum at this rate. But the exhibition at the Antipa Museum was only the beginning of the initiative. Our mission is to find our readers in the country and protect them. On those who want to help protect the reader species can explore the Map of Reader Reservations and flag the places where readers still find refuge. We propose that, at the end of the initiative, we mark the most populated places as Natural Reserves for Readers, where they can permanently benefit from offers on books.
Who joined the effort?
Eli: Many, incredibly many people, from very different areas, from the press, who promptly reacted to our invitations, to online and offline communities of readers, influencers, bookstagrammers, cultural managers, professionals in the book industry, but also from other fields, writers, etc.
Who represented the species at the Antipa Museum
Eli: The main idea we had in mind was to have as diverse a range of people as possible to represent the endangered species of readers, so we appealed to all the areas mentioned above, and the reactions were immediate.
How the species of readers has survived so far
Eli: Through the thirst for stories. This is how the reader’s species survived, and in this primary need for stories, in whatever form they may be, is our hope for survival in the future.
The book came relatively recently in the history of mankind to be a good, i.e. a custom accessible to the masses, and even (since) it had periods of peak and decline. There were therefore times when the reader did very well, times when, because the level of education and methods of leisure were different from the contemporary era, the species flourished. We would like to return there, precisely because reading comes with countless psychic, mental, emotional benefits.
As for the habitat of this endangered species, the most beautiful part is the wide range of spaces where we can find it: a bench in a park, a corner of a cafe, a library room, an armchair in a company, a subway seat, a bed in a house, in line at the bank, on a deckchair at the beach, standing on the bus, on a blanket at a festival, in a seat on an airplane and so on, in almost infinite combinations .
The factors that brought the readers species to extinction
Robert: The advent of digital. Of social networks. Entertainment just a click away. You are one scroll away from the dopamine infusion. A book cannot give you this instant effect, but the benefits that come with reading are much more.
How could they survive
Christian: I think the first step would be awareness of the problem. And the benefits you can get if you read. Then small steps towards a routine that includes at least 30 minutes of reading per day.
Reading habits
Christian: I don’t have the luxury of sitting and reading for hours. I have a job, I have children, so I don’t really sit around for nothing. But I try to read a few pages every day, before sleep. I’m obsessed with any author and I take all the books written by him one by one. Depending on the mood, I alternate the cards.
How do you choose titles?
Eli: In recent years, priority has been given to titles that I use in my job, as documentation and to stay up-to-date, to keep up with what is published at other publishing houses here or abroad, what are the directions, trends, preferences readers and publishers. Sometimes they also intersect with personal tastes and pursuits, other times I have to add to the list of priorities and other titles that correspond to them, complement my intellectual and emotional needs. And I choose them depending on the news, on the projects I’m working on or the future ones, but also on the status. Let me give a concrete example: I can’t read fiction if I edit a fiction book, so I choose to read poetry or non-fiction, for example.
As for the books I have on the list in 2024… how much room do we have? What I can say is that I have a few stacks that I definitely won’t be able to get through by the end of the year (I manage to read about 100-250 books a year, beyond the manuscripts and volumes I’m working on)—especially if we’re considering the fact that we’re halfway through it, so there will still be a lot more cards that will join the stacks, which in turn will change their order a few dozen times. Again, to give three concrete examples, the very short list now includes titles like Here I Find Myself by Jhumpa Lahiri, A Strong Woman by Fern Brady, and Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro.
Book of the year
Eli: I’m going to cheat a little, if you’ll let me, and say what are the books of the year so far for me: the ones most recently published in n’autor. Because they were the closest to me in the last months, I turned my back on them, they were a kind of home for me. In order of publication, therefore, Punk requiem, by Goran Mrakić, Ultima carte, by Marian Coman, and Turbo, by Andrei Crăciun.
why are you reading
Christian: It’s a moment that anchors me in the present and calms me down. In addition, I have two children who, fortunately, have not yet entered the digital world and whom I want to cultivate the habit of reading. So I try my best to see me more often with a book in my hand than on my phone.
Source: www.iqads.ro
