Litbait tries to troll readers into reading classic books with “clickbait” headlines which are actually the plots of well-known novels. Via Adweek:
Facebook posts featured witty teases like “British guy dies after selfie gone wrong” (The Picture of Dorian Grey), “Teenage girl tricked boyfriend into killing himself” (Romeo and Juliet), “When it’s OKAY to slut shame single mothers” (The Scarlet Letter) and—wait for it!—”This Italian politician makes Trump look like a saint” (The Prince by Machiavelli … which got as passionate a response as you can expect).
The campaign launched on Sept. 6, which was National Read a Book Day. When users clicked on the links, they were directed to a blog post that included the text of the entire book. (Talk about a long read.)
While it’s unlikely people stuck around to read a six-hour blog post, The Wild Detectives says “Litbait” yielded a 14,000 percent boost in site traffic (leading one to wonder what its traffic was before) and 150 percent more post engagement on Facebook.
“You fell for the bait, now fall for the book,” the video concludes, which pretty much sums up the goal of the campaign—to remind people that there are way better things to read than clickbaity articles on the internet.