Hello Sunshine
There's many reasons that I respect Reese Witherspoon. She's brought us some of the most iconic series and films during the past 20 years including Legally Blonde, Big Little Lies and Sweet Home Alabama to name a few. Reese has many strings to her bow and founded production company Hello Sunshine in 2016.
Brand Purpose
Hello Sunshine’s main purpose is to champion the stories of women change makers, creatives, writers and leaders. The need for this has been in Hollywood for years and this need was recognised by Reese in the lack of multifaceted female roles in feature films and series. Hello Sunshine was created to redefine production companies and provide equal opportunities for actors, crew, writers and producers. The company however is so much more than media producers. Hello Sunshine encapsulates many brands including Reese’s Book Club, The Home Edit, Fair Play and Unicorn Space.
Their brand purpose is not just a shiny ideal, the leaders have put into action the change they want to see in society and for women. They do this by selecting important stories to share, making suitable investments and hiring the right people to execute these plans. Forbes recently published an article on how Hello Sunshine have redefined what brand purpose is in the new normal post-pandemic. Some corporations want to seem softer, caring and more personable. They want to give the illusion of equality yet not do anything to achieve it, Reese and her team have turned this notion on its head and simply put into action what they know they can achieve.
Reese’s Book Club
In 2021, Time Magazine listed Hello Sunshine it’s Top 100 Most Influential Companies. It cities the importance of Reese’s Book Club as a main foundation of the business. Each month Reese shares via Instagram her “Book of the Month” with the eager 2.6 million followers this community boasts. By celebrating books written by female authors this way Reese has “established a track record for spotting, and making, hits.”
Some of the most popular series and films Hello Sunshine has developed from books and produced include “Daisy Jones and the Six”, “Where the Crawdads Sing” and “The Morning Show”. If you’re interested in the numbers around these picks you’ll like to see that 61 of Reese’s picks have landed on the NY Times Best Seller list, 15 produced movies and/or series have won Emmys, SAG and Golden Globe awards.
An Empire of Good
The next step for Hello Sunshine is the launch of the LitUp programme in partnership with We Need Diverse Books and Madcap Retreats. This programme will provide support for 25 new female identifying authors over the next 5 years from underrepresented backgrounds. Fellows accepted to LitUp will benefit an all-expenses-paid writers’ retreat and a mentor from its pool of former book-club authors. They will also receive marketing support from Hello Sunshine.
All of these efforts with partners cements the brand purpose for good and change that Hello Sunshine embodies. Reese has said that the idea of this programme came from the structural barriers in traditional publishing houses and that if her company wanted to create opportunities for women from all backgrounds it would need to disrupt the industry altogether. And I think we can agree that they’ve already accomplished very much of this already.