BRANDED: “Dandelion Is Dead“ by Rosie Storey - MY LAUNCH CAMPAIGN
I’ve been thinking about Dandelion Is Dead by Rosie Storey the way you think about someone after a dramatic breakup – all the secrets, lies, and the excruciating realisation that what you’ve been building has stopped growing.
The novel is all art-girl allure on the outside and quietly deranged on the inside. It’s about grief, boredom, desire, and the dangerous intimacy of pretending to be someone else. When Poppy finds her dead sister Dandelion’s Hinge profile still active, she doesn’t close the app. She becomes her.
Diving into their story, one question wouldn’t leave me alone: what would a marketing campaign look like if Dandelion Is Dead wasn’t just a book you read, but a relationship you enter into (and maybe shouldn’t)?
In this episode of BOOK REBRANDING, I’m not responding to an existing campaign. Dandelion Is Dead is yet to be published on March 12, 2026 by The Borough Press (Harper Collins UK). That’s why, I am approaching this as a piece of BOOK BRANDING – imagining how the visual language, emotional logic, and deception of the novel could live outside the page for the very first time.
My Reimagined Campaign
Dandelion Is Dead isn’t really about catfishing, or dating apps, or even romance. It’s about the desire to feel alive again, no matter the cost. About grief as a form of role-play. About being loved for a version of yourself that isn’t real, and letting it happen anyway.
Since at the heart of it are Poppy and Dandelion, I would centre its campaign around the childhood ritual of plucking petals and the simple, uneasy hook: Loves Me / Loves Me Not. My ideas include the following:
📱 Stalking My Catfisher Reel
As part of the campaign, I would create a scroll-stopping hook around the line: “This feels like I’m stalking my catfisher.”
I would shoot a short-form reel from multiple locations across London. Every shot will show people peer through flower-shaped binoculars – watching, waiting, searching. It’s playful at first, becoming unsettling over time. Text will flash across the screen in fragments: She matches with the guy. She falls in love. She is lying. She is dead.
My idea is to evoke tension and curiosity, encouraging viewers to stop scrolling and want to learn more. The aim would be to translate the novel’s unsettling pull into a piece of content that feels bold, slightly uncomfortable, and highly shareable.
🌼 Flower Installations: A flower for who you almost were
I would put installations of poppies, dandelions, and sunflowers across independent bookshops to echo the novel’s visual language. At the centre of each installation, there will be a simple instruction: Leave a flower for a version of yourself that didn’t make it.
Readers will be invited to write short messages to 1) people they miss, 2) lives they didn’t choose, or 3) relationships that never came to existence, then fold them to origami flowers to add to the installation. Everyone will contribute to a growing, slightly messy archive of almosts. Over time, the installations will become less decorative and more confessional, which mirrors the way Poppy slowly wishes to step out of Dandelion’s shoes, having found closure.
💔 Hinge Book Club
Poppy and Jake meet on Hinge. So the launch campaign does too.
I would start by creating a collaborative Instagram post with Hinge, announcing a singles book club event inspired by the novel. Instagram read-alongs are currently trendy, and partnering with a dating app would tap into an audience already seeking connection. Bringing people together around a common interest (reading) will position the book as both a cultural moment and a social experience.
In addition, I would host an in-person book club in a plant-filled venue – a greenhouse bar, or a conservatory space. Guests will receive a drink and prompts that reflect the book’s central tensions: being loved as the wrong person, performing intimacy, choosing fantasy over stability, which will replace predictable dating games with deep, meaningful conversations. Instead of swiping, people will be able to hand out flowers, declaring their feelings/attraction in a modern loves me, loves me not way.
🌸 Pressed Flowers Workshops
While the novel is built on deception, this final activation leans into the art of creating something long-lasting and real.
Small workshops in places like Kew Gardens will invite readers to pick, press, and preserve different types of flowers. Participants will learn how to turn them into bookmarks, simple jewellery, or stamped letters – tactile objects from something already dying.
The aesthetic will reflect Dandelion’s style in the novel: colourful, grungy, chaotic. Each finished piece will be tagged with the novel’s title, and give readers a physical artefact that carries the emotional residue of Poppy and Jake with them.
Why This Matters
Dandelion Is Dead isn’t a high-concept thriller or a romcom with a twist. It’s a book about grief, performance, and the lengths we’ll reach to feel chosen, to feel alive. Through reading it, you will understand that love doesn’t always arrive as honesty, and that sometimes we need to disappear a little to find out true selves.
This campaign doesn’t try to moralise Poppy’s decision or sensationalise her deception. Instead, it builds a world around the same questions the novel asks: who are you when someone loves you as the wrong person? And how far would you go to stay inside that feeling?
These four ideas will give readers a place to put the feelings they don’t usually admit to – the boredom, the longing, the urge to try on another life to see if it fits and decide whether to preserve it or let go.
Because maybe the real question isn’t if they love you or love you not. Maybe it’s why we keep wondering at all.
