Audible Australia has collaborated with Twitch ANZ to launch the Audible Live Club, showcasing how audiobooks and podcasts can be the perfect shared listening experience.

This modern take on the classic book club launched with a unique “Awwdible” Twitch Emote, two hyped Audible Live Club ‘episodes’ featuring popular Australian creators Stephen “Bajo” O’Donnell and iamfallfromgrace and bespoke, native commercials. This campaign is designed to appeal to Twitch’s highly engaged community of creators and fans, showing them a new, interactive way to experience audio storytelling.

In a first for Twitch ANZ’s Branded Partnerships Studio, its team showcased full-service capabilities to create the native commercials starring Bajo and iamfallfromgrace, who share their favourite Aussie Audible Originals including ‘Rogue Son’ by Nazeem Hussain and 2020 Walkley Award finalist ‘Debutante: Race, Resistance and Girl Power’ by Nakkiah Lui and Miranda Tapsell.

Audible Live Club kicked off episode one on Thursday 10 December, with Bajo and his loyal community listening live to ‘Nut Jobs’—an Audible Original, narrated by Australian journalist and TV presenter Marc Fennell that details his quest to crack California’s strangest $10 million heist.

Episode two soon followed, with iamfallfromgrace teaming up with fellow Twitch streamer Reapz in an attempt to create an “Audible Original” of their own by performing a live, interactive, and very 2020 take on Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Twitch head of sales ANZ Ricky Chanana said he hoped the creative platform was a springboard for other Twitch streamers to start hosting live audiobook clubs with their online community.

“Audible Live Club was designed to drive awareness of Audible’s best-selling audiobooks and exclusive local podcasts among our highly engaged millennial and generation Z audience who consume almost all of their entertainment online,” Chanana said.

“Every month, our community is watching more than 1.5 billion hours of content on Twitch, and particularly this year, we’ve seen organic non-gaming content rapidly increase in popularity. With millions of people tuning in to their favourite creator ‘Just Chatting’ on Twitch, we thought, why not tap into the love for this with another fun way to experience Audible alongside the joy of the co-op,” he said.

Audible Australia country manager Leanne Cartwright-Bradford said that Audible was always looking for new ways to share innovative listening experiences with customers.

“We’re excited to be able to introduce the Twitch Community to Audible Originals in an authentic and entertaining way. Working with the Twitch team, we’ve been able to create an engaging conversation about award-winning Aussie content, tapping into the shared listening experience offered by the platform,” Cartwright-Bradford said.

Chanana concluded, “Audible Live Club is a truly fantastic campaign to cap off Twitch’s first official year with boots on the ground in ANZ. I cannot wait to see how our creative powerhouses and dedicated client service team help local brands connect with our hard-to-reach Aussie community in 2021.”

The custom “Awwdible” Twitch Emote is available globally and the Audible Live Club commercials will continue to stream on Twitch well into 2021. Tune into Twitch’s live, interactive, personality and content-based, community-driven video, where anyone can play a role in creating the moment, at twitch.tv.

Credits

• Audible Australia:
  • Brand & Communications Director: Sara Dunseath
  • Senior Content Marketing Manager: Alexandra Conomos
  • Senior Brand Marketing Manager: Melissa O’Leary
  • Brand Marketing & Communications Specialist: Nikki Harris
  • Creative Manager: Sacha Kenyon
• Twitch ANZ:
  • Head of Sales ANZ: Ricky Chanana
  • Senior Creative Strategist: Edwin Hughan
  • Program Activations Lead: Brett Melvill-Smith
  • Program Activation Manager: Joanne Garcia
  • Production Lead: Sam LeGassick
  • Creative Producer: Romee Adema
  • Client Success Manager: Alex Tran
  • Account Manager: Michael Ison
• Media Monks:
  • Creative Director: Kim Jerbo
  • Senior Producer: Sophia Feary
  • Technical Project Manager: Igor Evangelista
  • Senior Film Producer: Angelyn Lee
  • Executive Producer: Marie-Celine Merret Wirstrom (oversight)
• Talent:
  • Stephen “Bajo” O’Donnell
  • iamfallfromgrace
  • Reapz
  • Marc Fennell