Hyundai E&C Hillstate said on the 11th that it won an excellence award in the SNS marketing institutional sector of the marketing/campaign category at the Korea Digital Advertising Awards (KODAF 2025) this year with the Hills Reader campaign, a community project that grows with books.
The Korea Digital Advertising Awards is the largest digital advertising awards in Korea, hosted by the Korea Digital Advertising Association and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, selecting outstanding digital campaign works every year. The Hills Reader campaign, which won the excellence award, is a video content series that covers Hillstate's book curation for residents and the production of an audiobook that helps realize residents' dreams. It can be viewed on Hillstate's official YouTube channel, Hills Casting.
The Hills Reader campaign began in response to social problems arising from declining reading, such as reduced literacy and increasing dyslexia. To create a reading environment that is easy to access in daily life, it uses small libraries within the complexes to provide residents with a reading-friendly environment and aims to expand emotional communication through books.
Hillstate partnered with ARC·N·BOOK to curate books and spaces around lifestyle, placing curated books for residents in small libraries within Hillstate complexes. With five themes—growth of the individual, growth of relationships, growth of culture, growth of knowledge, and growth of the future—professional book curators carefully selected 35 titles so residents can read at any time and share a variety of stories on the same themes.
The book curation zones are currently set up at Samseon Hillstate, Hillstate River Park, Gapcheon 1 Triple City Hillstate, and Hillstate Sosa Station, among others. The fact that residents actually living in the complexes directly participated in producing the audiobook drew attention, as it encouraged natural communication among residents through books while boosting participation in the campaign.
In Sep., Hillstate recruited residents to record an audiobook through its official social media, website, and bulletin boards in each complex. Many residents who dreamed of becoming voice actors or announcers, or who had related experience, applied, and five were finally selected. After receiving professional training from Kwon Do-il, a KBS open recruitment voice actor, the selected narrators completed recording the audiobook of poet Na Tae-ju's new poetry collection, "Love, people, flowers, and poetry." The audiobook is scheduled to be released simultaneously with the book in Jan. next year and will be available on audiobook platforms such as "Millie's library." All audiobook revenue will be donated next year to related charities to promote reading culture among children and teenagers.
Hyundai E&C is energizing the libraries within its complexes and promoting a reading culture through special book programs such as the "Circulating Bookshelf." Together with ARC·N·BOOK and Beautiful Store, it replaces some books quarterly with curated new releases, and donates the replaced books to put book circulation into practice. By continuously managing the libraries within the complexes and creating an environment where residents can enjoy the "joy of reading," it plans to improve usage rates and satisfaction.
A Hyundai E&C official said, "Hillstate has gone beyond a residential brand to design enjoyable and enriching lives for residents," adding, "This Hills Reader campaign is content that well reflects that brand philosophy, and we plan to expand programs through which the brand and residents can think together about social issues and grow together in residents' lives going forward."