What happened when Audible created a propaganda channel on Twitch

Twitch is Gen Z’s live-streaming platform of choice, with a global audience of over 250m active users. Its core audience of 16-24-year-olds (famously hard-to-reach through traditional advertising) is passionate about everything live, from gaming to sports, music, cooking, TV, film or even just chatting. Sitting at the heart of the service are its Creators, who are not only experts in delivering compelling live entertainment, but also builders of the world’s most engaged online communities.

Despite Orwell’s intention of delivering a satirical novel, many of the book’s themes, including mass surveillance, propaganda, nationalism, poverty and inequality are as current today as they were at the end of the Second World War. What he could not foresee, however, was the impact of technology and in particular, Artificial Intelligence, on the lives of our contemporary audience.

Twitch’s Brand Partnership Studio saw AI as the key to engaging its community in an original, prescient way and set out to achieve a world-first: a dedicated channel, streaming live 24/7, powered entirely by AI.

‘Truth HQ’ became the propaganda channel on Twitch for 1984’s fictional government, Ingsoc. All content created and broadcast was generated by Gaze Monitor, a custom AI created by Twitch using Open AI technology. The channel went live on 17th April, with little fanfare or context, creating intrigue and discussion in Chat and across Discord channels.

Once we had created the novel’s propaganda mouthpiece, we set Twitch’s creators and their communities the ultimate challenge: to hack the channel and take down Truth HQ. Three of the UK’s leading streamers AnnaDemetriou, Tyrone and CaptainPuffy (with a combined subscribed audience of 1.6m) were selected, each playing a distinct role in the story and bringing their own presentation style and community to the experience.

Over the course of three separate two-hour streams, our resistance fighters were set a series of tasks, challenges and mini games to complete, with input from their fans. If successful, they would stop the Ingsoc propaganda feed and unlock an exclusive 10-minute excerpt from the Audible Original adaptation.

Chapter 1 - The Engineer And The Device

The first stream in the series saw AnnaDemetriou assume the role of The Engineer, an electronics expert who set up the wireless network in Truth HQ. The Engineer had built a device out of scrap and smuggled parts that allowed external access to that network.

Deployed correctly, it could obtain a secret passcode, enabling other rebels to access the system remotely. However, the device needed to be calibrated. Anna and her viewers had to access documentation posted online which provided clues to align switches, configure a set of plugs and focus the signal to enter the network.

A second game saw the player exploring a network of computer nodes, accessing data and confidential documents detailing how to operate a service robot and the layout of the building. Throughout the process, Gaze Monitor had been viewing the infiltration, setting traps to throw the player off course.

Our player transferred the required files onto a supplied disk ready to pass to our second character, The Operator. But just as the task was completed, viewers heard loud banging on the door and the stream was taken over by Big Brother propaganda, ending the episode on a cliffhanger.

Chapter 2 - The Operator And The Robot

The second stream in the campaign saw Tyrone cast as The Operator, a construction worker tasked with obtaining the disk smuggled into Truth HQ by The Engineer and inserting it into the mainframe computer using a remotely operated robot.

Tyrone worked with Chat to navigate Truth HQ’s rooms and corridors, avoiding surveillance cameras ready to pick up any unexpected movements. Once again, Gaze Monitor spotted the infiltrator, setting a series of traps. Laser grid lines at the entrance to the mainframe required a sequence of perfectly timed moves to avoid electrocution.

After eventually making it past the security systems, the remotely operated robot successfully inserted the disk into the mainframe, disabling the propaganda feed and displaying a code for The Artist to play his part.

Chapter 3 - The Artist And The Takeover

The final stream cast CaptainPuffy as The Artist, the creator and distributor of anti-propaganda imagery. Having amassed hundreds of designs over the years, he intends to broadcast them via the hacked Truth HQ propaganda stream.

The Artist begins by typing in the access code, but a more highly evolved Gaze Monitor is lying in wait. The Artist is thrown into a series of network games in order to gain access to the propaganda stream. With just 30 minutes left on the stream, Gaze Monitor initiates a self-destruct protocol, with the Artist battling to take over individual screens on the broadcast feed. Completing the final node in the sequence, Big Brother’s eye, the stream is taken over by the audiobook extract.

In a final plot twist, the Big Brother Eye returned to the feed and a message was displayed, denying any disruptions had taken place and presenting the three characters as model citizens.

Results

Marketers have been persistently told that we live in a world of attention deficiency. Social media platforms insist that the only way to reach younger audiences is through shorter-than-short-form content and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ads. At Twitch, we know the opposite is true, because we see deep, meaningful engagement around long-form content on a daily basis.

This three-part partnership with Audible promoting the ‘1984’ audio book was an undisputed hit, with over one million unique viewers tuning in for six hours of 1984-themed action. That’s a 400% uplift on our benchmark for sponsored livestreams.

Twitch was able to tap into its core audience of passionate gamers, knowing that the chosen streamers had highly collaborative communities that would work together to solve challenges. The use of AI updated Orwell’s narrative to the present day, tapping into cultural conversations around the power and potential threat artificial intelligence, while reinforcing the role of humans in the loop.

Viewer engagement was core to the experience throughout, with each stream seeing creators collaborating with viewers in Chat to solve challenges. This generated an astonishing 34,000 chat messages, achieving 7x our benchmark for community engagement.

Finally, we believe time is precious and that viewers will only stick around if the content is worth their attention. Where we would typically expect to see around 750k minutes of audience time across three brand partner streams, our Truth HQ activation generated a total of 3.5 million minutes watched.

And how did the campaign impact Audible's landmark release? ‘1984’ became April’s global chart topper and #1 audio book in the UK.

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