- The Straits Times -
Piece of news on Carte Noire\'s latest viral campaign just launched in July.
Forget audio books. Gaze into the eyes of hunky actor Dominic West and watch him read to you instead. That is the seductive idea behind coffee company Carte Noire's latest viral campaign, launched earlier this month.
At www.cartenoire.co.uk[http://www.cartenoire.co.uk], you can choose to have West read you a scene from Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice or listen to Greg Wise intone passages from Eileen Chang's Lust, Caution or see Dan Stevens verbalise Madame Bovary's thoughts from the Gustave Flaubert novel.
So far, 15 short video clips have been posted on the site. New readings are posted every week and the campaign is to run for 30 instalments, each featuring a romantic excerpt from a novel.
Each reading, which lasts between 10 and 15 minutes, begins with the actor, settled cosily into a chair, giving an introduction to the book.
Then he asks, 'Are you sitting comfortably yet?', before beginning the reading.
The idea behind the campaign is to offer, as its tagline says, a 'more seductive coffee break'.
Carte Noire has also tied up with Penguin Books UK for the promotion. The actors use Penguin editions of the novels. Visitors to the website can also win Penguin Books as well as follow links to the publisher's website to purchase copies of the books featured.
West, best known as detective John McNulty in the critically acclaimed HBO crime drama The Wire, told the Guardian newspaper that reading Austen was a challenge because of the 'muscular' writing.
'It is a difficult thing to sight-read, like with Shakespeare, you have to support 15 clauses before you get to the end of a sentence,' he added.
On the website, Wise said he had a different problem - grappling with the Asian names in Chang's short story.
He said: 'I would have asked my local grocer, who is from Hong Kong, but when I went there, he was closed.'
He actually did a decent job but you can judge for yourself at the website.