At this year’s Oz Comic-Con Melbourne and Supanova Sydney, action and adventure fans were invited to literally step inside their favourite stories, thanks to Audible’s immersive new activation: the Audible Secret Library.
Blending audiobook fandom with real-life thrills, the escape room experience challenged players to unlock their way through a series of multi-sensory challenges inspired by beloved titles like Harry Potter, Dune, The Hunger Games, Project Hail Mary, Onyx Storm, The Fellowship of the Ring and Dungeon Crawler Carl.
The idea was simple: bring Audible’s vast library to life and let superfans prove their knowledge and earn bragging rights in a bespoke experience that felt straight out of their imaginations.
Chatting with B&T, Polly Blenkinship, head of global brand media at Audible, said that the brand “wanted to go where the fans of these stories were!”
“OzComicCon and SuperNova are two of the most-loved events for SciFi and Fantasy fans in Australia,” said Blenkinship. “Audible has a massive collection of sci-fi and fantasy audiobooks that immerse fans in their favourite fictional universes, offering them the opportunity to experience the stories they love in thrilling new ways”.
Led into the escape room by a team of “Audible Librarians,” players made their way through five themed challenge rooms, solving visual puzzles and audio-based clues to earn their escape. Every solved challenge brought them closer to a prize: a free three-month Audible Premium Plus membership and, for one lucky participant, a trip to New York Comic Con.
The activation marked a strategic push from Audible into experiential marketing, one that prioritised brand consideration through hands-on immersion.
“Audible has been in Australia for more than 10 years, and while most people are aware of both audiobooks and us as a brand, there’s still a job to do to help people think of audiobooks as one of the best ways to enjoy their favourite stories,” Blenkinship said.
“The Audible Secret Library allowed us to connect with fans of a number of sci-fi and fantasy titles who might not have known about these titles, and the audiobook experiences we deliver.
“These bespoke and targeted activations complement our more traditional mass media plans, allowing us to tap into local fandoms and have a more direct relationship with our audience”.
Sebastian Revell, executive strategy partner at Emotive, the agency that brought the experience to life alongside Eleven, Wavemaker and Hello Social, said the format was born from a fundamental product truth: “Out of all our genres and associated titles, Action, Adventure, which includes Sci-fi and Fantasy, overdelivers in terms of having the most passionate fanbases.”
“These fans are creative listeners with rich imaginations – they dive in to the opportunity to be immersed in their favourite worlds!”.
Escape rooms, he explained, gave fans a tangible way to interact with those fandoms.
“Firstly, escape rooms are an immersive and fun way to put fans to the test… Secondly, most escape rooms outside of major events tend to be independently owned, meaning they are unable to tap into premium IPs like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. With that in mind, there would be an engaging novelty in seeing these well-loved IPs come to life in a format fans hadn’t experienced before.”
“Hyperbolic product demonstrations go a long way to drive attention and consideration. Inspired by the likes of Red Bull Stratos, Whopper Detour or more recently ModiBodi’s Shark Week, our strategic vision was to create our own exaggeration of what Audible’s premium audio storytelling experience is like for listeners and fans,” Revell explained.
Revell pointed out that this is the first time some of these universes have ever been visualised and as such “bringing those worlds to life required us to get creative in a way that felt authentic to fans of that IP, so we had to be very true to the text with nuggets of “IYKYK” with how the fans will have imagined those worlds”.
“And on the flipside,” he explained. “Harry Potter and Hunger Games are both familiar to broader audiences via their respective film adaptations, so it was important to create an experience that stood apart from those adaptations but was still recognisable as being true to the author’s vision”.
For Audible, brand consideration was the main goal. “We wanted to encourage people to see audiobooks as another avenue through which to explore these worlds, doing so in a way that created talkability around our library of top Sci-Fi and Fantasy titles. All while making it Instagrammable and TikTok worthy to share with their friends,” Blenkinship said.
And it worked. More than 1,400 people completed the challenge across the two weekends, with fans lining up from morning until close.
“Despite all the noise and activations at these events, we consistently had fans lining up to experience the escape room,” Revell said. “People were not only connecting with the escape room itself, but they were also talking about now going to listen to these titles on Audible!”
From the blockbuster classics that “get people in the door” to “hidden gems” like Dungeon Crawler Carl that stoke fan discovery, the experience managed to bridge awareness with deeper engagement.
For Blenkinship, this is only just the beginning, with more immersive experiences on the horizon. “We’re always looking for engaging media opportunities to bring our audiobooks to life… Earlier this year, we executed a collaboration with run-tracking app Strava, showcasing how audiobooks can help fuel and motivate fitness goals. We’ve got more projects like this on the horizon, so stay tuned”.
