House of Prose. Rearranged.
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Case Study
House of Prose.
Rearranged.
Turning obscurity into discovery.
House of Prose, one of the UAE’s oldest second-hand bookstores, was slipping into obscurity. We transformed its invisibility into intrigue - changing its name every day using anagrams, and turning one bookstore into 31 different identities during the Month of Reading.
Client
House of Prose
Year
2025
Category
Retail
Services
At a Glance
- CategoryRetail
- DeliveredBrand Activation, Retail Experience, Cultural Intervention
01 - The Brief
Reignite awareness and bring people back - without the budgets of major bookstore chains
House of Prose, one of the UAE’s oldest and most beloved second-hand bookstores, was fading into irrelevance. Once a cultural landmark, it had shrunk from four branches to a single store, with little visibility and declining footfall.
Project Scope
Brand Strategy
Creative Concept
Retail Experience Design
Naming System
Content & Social
AR Integration
Environmental Design
02 - THE CHALLENGE
In a fast-moving, convenience-driven city, physical bookstores are no longer destinations
And second-hand bookstores, even less so.
House of Prose wasn’t just competing with other retailers.
It was competing with:
- Algorithms
- E-commerce
- And a culture that no longer discovers books - it is served them
The task:
Reignite awareness and bring people back - without the budgets of major bookstore chains.
03 - The tension we challenged
If the bookstore had become invisible, how do you make people notice it again?
Not by shouting louder.
But by making it impossible to ignore.
This was the Define moment:
Instead of asking: How do we advertise the bookstore?
We reframed the challenge:
How do you make something forgotten a little more impossible to ignore?
Curious mind.
The moment people realised the shelves were part of the story.
Designed to be seen, shared, and explored.
04 - The Insight
House of Prose’s strength was never just its inventory.
It was discovery.
A place where books and stories resurface in unexpected ways.
So instead of advertising the bookstore…
We turned the bookstore itself into something worth rediscovering.
Reinventing Retail
Book lovers rediscovered long lost beloved books.
Month of Reading Social Post
When browsing becomes a puzzle, people stay longer.
05 - The Idea
A Bookstore that reinvents itself. Every day.
During the UAE’s Month of Reading, House of Prose changed its name - every single day.
Using anagrams, we reshuffled the letters in “House of Prose” to create a new identity, daily.
Each name was:
- Unique
- Unexpected
- Rooted in literature itself
Turning one bookstore into 30 different ones.
A brand moment you can literally read.
Letters from Literature
Each letter in every new name was sourced from iconic book covers.
Meaning: Every identity was built from the stories inside the store.
06 - What we made
The four layers of engagement
A new name, every day.
The storefront physically transformed daily - with a new anagrammatic name replacing the old.
A static store became a living, evolving entity.
Built to evolve, not just launch.
Letters from Literature
Each letter in every new name was sourced from iconic book covers.
Meaning:
Every identity was built from the stories inside the store.
Augmented discovery
Through AR, visitors could scan letters to reveal the original books they came from.
Driving:
- Exploration
- Interaction
- And purchase of featured titles at discounted prices
AR Technology
Engine: WebAR (no app download)
Trigger: Book cover recognition
Content: 3D book details
Action: Purchase
Make discovery feel like a game, not a filter.
A reason to return
Because the name changed daily, so did the experience.
Giving people a reason to come back again and again.
This was the Delight moment:
We turned passive browsing into active discovery.
What was once static, became dynamic. What was once overlooked, became unpredictable.
07 - Impact
House of Prose, found.
- A forgotten bookstore became a daily curiosity
- Footfall was driven through repeat visits
- Social engagement turned organic and participatory
- The store re-entered cultural conversation
More importantly
It repositioned House of Prose not as a relic of the past - but as a living, evolving part of the present.
07 - Why this matters
In a world obsessed with the new, this idea proved something powerful:
You don’t need new stories to create relevance.
You just need to retell them differently.
This was the Delight moment:
Curiosity turned into behaviour.
Exploration turned into purchase.
Inaction turned into momentum.
Work Delivered
Capabilities
Design & Branding
- Spatial & Environmental Brand Design
Digital Experience & Content
- Commerce & Conversion
Brand Experience & Activation
- Experiential Activations & Events
- Interactive & Phygital
- Outdoor & Spatial Branding
Cross-cutting Capabilities
- Creative Strategy & Concepts
- Creative Direction
