Amazon Music is now streaming audiobooks, and MakeMake brings that story to life through a campaign rooted in the transportive power of imagination sparked by the app.
Dramatizing how audiobooks enrich everyday life, the series captures the breadth of audiobook titles available, the wide range of interests of readers, and familiar situations transformed into unexpected moments of wonder. They were directed by Ben West and edited by Zoe Mougin and Sam Slavkin, with creative direction from Cindy SooHoo, VFX led by Andres Barrios, writing by Sasha Markova and strategy by Venetia Taylor.
The campaign was created through a unique non-linear workflow, the Studio calls MakeMake Prototyping™. MakeMake’s Story team of writers and strategists work simultaneously with design, direction, animation, editorial, production, and the Amazon brand team, all coming together in real time from inception to final pixel. MakeMake Prototyping allowed the team to iterate throughout the creative process with a foresight and fluidity most studios don’t have. The director’s prototypes informed script development and production choices, while writers and editorial influenced production decisions.
Ben West, Director: “What we loved about this campaign was finding the extraordinary hiding inside completely ordinary moments. Setting these films in spaces we all move through on autopilot provided the perfect contrast to introduce Amazon Music’s audiobook selection. The second you drop a great story into someone’s ears, everything shifts. Everything dissolves, and you’re somewhere else entirely. None of this feels like a stretch because that’s genuinely what a good book does to your brain, and thereby, your reality.”
Cindy SooHoo, Creative Director: “What I loved most about this campaign was seeing how far the idea could evolve through collaboration across MakeMake’s diverse creative talents. What began as a simple brief to build awareness around audiobooks on Amazon Music grew into an opportunity to push the idea somewhere more unexpected—shifting toward cinematic, live-action storytelling and using visual effects to elevate and expand each listener’s world. By reimagining familiar, everyday moments through the lens of someone’s imagination, we explored how audiobooks can transform the ordinary into something transportive, liberating, and unexpectedly funny. Ultimately, the campaign is a celebration of people, their creativity, and the vivid personal journeys unfolding just beneath the surface.”
Angus Wall, Founder: “This is a great campaign: hard-working, beautifully executed, and funny! It also represents a fundamental change in how creative work gets incepted, iterated, and realized. MakeMake Prototyping™ means that clients and all the members of the MakeMake creative ecosystem – strategists, writers, designers, directors, producers, editors, vfx artists, colorists- can work in a much more elegant and effective way. We’ve eliminated the old assembly line model full of blind handoffs and missed opportunities. Working within this completely integrated and collaborative new system, we are able to push the ideas and execution further on every level. It has also re-introduced a sense of play into the process for everyone, especially our clients. We’ve been working for the past two years to create an environment where this can happen, and we’re very grateful to Amazon Music for letting us show how this is simply a better way of working.”
