Instagram is Now a Book Publishing Platform?

These kids, they just don’t show loyalty to brands like the olden days. Now you have to go on their turf to get their attention to keep getting attention for your brand. So, in an attempt to teach by doing, marketer Jason Sperling is releasing his new how-to in the digital age marketing book bit by bit, Instagram post by Instagram post.

Starting June 25, Look at Me When I’m Talking to You will be posted page by page on Instagram over the course of 160 days. Sperling will use Instagram video to animate his book’s illustrations, making for a multimedia instructional on modern marketing. The piecemeal approach reflects Sperling’s thoughts on the consumer market in 21st century — in an interview with Ad Week, he talks about how shrinking attention spans are making it harder for brands to create long-term growth and stability. But, he’s not just spouting the conventional wisdom of the day — he has his doubts about the value of viral content, which tends to come and go very quickly without granting the creator any long-term benefits.

Sperling knows a thing or two about creating long-lasting growth — he’s worked on campaigns for Honda, Pixar, ESPN, and Suzuki, and led the team that created Apple’s 2010 ‘Get a Mac’ campaign. Anyone who graduated from the Apple school of marketing is pretty much guaranteed to have something useful to say on the subject.

– “Look at Me When I’m Talking to You” examines the obstacles that collectively threaten our industry’s future and offers up new rules for getting attention in an attention scarce world, inspiring care amidst consumer apathy, and fostering loyalty from an increasingly discerning and departing audience. It offers proven strategies for connecting with today’s fickle, fleeing, over-stimulated audience. It has 20% more humor than most marketing books, and 100% more pictures. ———- It’s getting harder for books to break through, as well. So in the spirit of disrupting prescribed models and in the hopes of being my best example, Look At Me When I’m Talking to You is going to be the first-ever book released on Instagram. Yes, INSTAGRAM. The home of selfiers and humblebraggarts will now become a home of authors, too. It will unspool page-by-page for the next several months, with a bite-sized portion every day. And because it’s being released on social media, it will be a “collaborative” book, combining my thoughts, your comments and consumer perspectives. ———- Look At Me When I’m Talking to You will launch on June 25th. Read it daily by following @lookatmebook.

A video posted by by Jason Sperling (@lookatmebook) on May 25, 2015 at 10:54pm PDT