My role
- Partnership Strategy
- Experience Design
- Creative Direction
- Campaign Development
- Author Relations
01
The Opportunity
I’d been thinking about Paint & Sip events for a while because they always felt like the kind of thing I’d actually convince my friends to do for my birthday. Around the same time, we were developing a partnership with Decoy Wine, and the connection felt natural: books, wine, friends, and conversation already lived in the same social ritual.
Reese also genuinely loves to paint, especially paint-by-numbers, so the idea felt rooted in something true rather than invented for a sponsorship. The question became: what if we turned a familiar book-club ritual into something people could make together?
02
The Idea
The concept was simple: readers would paint the cover of Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell while sharing wine, books, and conversation.
What made it work was the activity itself. Painting gave everyone something to focus on, which took pressure off the social part. People could talk when they wanted to, laugh at their paintings, compare colors, and connect without the awkwardness of standing around making small talk.
Painting gave everyone something to focus on, which somehow made it easier to focus on each other.
03
From Feed to Real Life
The partnership lived in two places. On social, we created content around book-club rituals people could recreate at home: setting the table, pouring a glass of wine, catching up with friends, and making reading feel like an occasion instead of another item on a to-do list.
Then we brought that idea into the real world with a Paint & Sip at The Maybourne in Beverly Hills. Readers, creators, authors, and industry friends painted together, met Rainbow Rowell, shared Decoy wines, and left with signed books and something they had made themselves. The live event became the fullest expression of the same idea we had introduced on social.
04
What Happened
The campaign exceeded expectations, reaching 4.3 million total impressions—more than 1 million above projection—while the event brought together 28 readers, creators, authors, and industry guests with a combined social following of 3.08 million.
- 4.3MTotal campaign impressions
- +1MImpressions above projection
- 28Readers, creators, authors, and industry guests attended
- 3.08MCombined attendee social following
05
What Stayed With Me
I had this idea sitting in the back of my mind for almost a year, so there was something especially satisfying about finally standing there surrounded by authors and readers, watching people paint a Reese’s Book Club cover while drinking wine and talking to someone they’d just met.
The unexpected lesson was how much the activity changed the room. Nobody painted the same cover, people asked each other about colors, laughed at their own work, and started conversations without having to search for the right opening line. As an extroverted introvert, I keep coming back to that: sometimes the best social experiences don’t force connection—they give people something natural to connect through.