‘Immersive Marketing’ and World Record-beating campaign lead BMS Awards for May-Aug 2013

POSTED ON: 04/10/13 TAGS: Adult fiction Awards Children's fiction Guerrilla marketing Non-fiction

by Jon Slack

In the swish refurbished Orion offices, the winners of the Best Marketing Campaign Awards for May-August 2013 were announced.

Adult winner:

Night Film, by Marisha Pessl
Marketers: Rebecca Ikin, Jamie Fewery, Vincent Kelleher and author Marisha Pessl (Random House)

This one took the concept of an “integrated campaign” to heart: it was clear that the marketing of this book had been thought through from the outset, with standout visuals and a huge range of digital assets. The team did not lose sight of this book’s core target audience: ‘urban enthusiasts’, as evidenced by realising their ambitious goal of delivering an ‘immersive’ marketing campaign. A ‘reality’ for the characters in the story was brought to life through creations generated outside of the book. This ranged from the use of the ‘found footage’ of the films created by the book’s central character, to the engagement of pro graphic designers creating posters for those films. The campaign carried an integrated aesthetic from the book trade launch onwards.

Children’s winner

The Paper Dolls, Julia Donaldson with Rebecca Cobb
Marketer: Louise McKee (Macmillan Children’s)

The Guinness Book of Records attempt to create the world’s longest paper doll chain was a stroke of genius, and worked fantastically well in engaging people with the content – over 5000 email addresses were collected from those who submitted. It reflected the level of engagement across the campaign which was very strong – from the Save the Children partnership through to extensive blogger take-up, and strong targeting of mum websites and teachers.

Shoestring campaign winner:

1913, Florian Illies
Marketer: Flora Willis & Niamh Murray (Profile Books)

An imaginative campaign, executed in classy style, which explored the actions of historical figures the year before war broke. Great use of Twitter, creating a year’s worth of e-cards, one for each month in 1913, which in turn received strong support from Waterstones. All in all an impressive impact for tiny spend.

 


One campaign was also highly commended:

Adult:

Dead Man’s Time by Peter James

  • Marketer: Jodie Mullish, with Naomi Bacon (Pan Macmillan)
    • Peter James’ campaigns are consistently strong but this was an especially tenacious effort
    • The local engagement with Brighton and the link with Peter’s stories was second to none, and extensive. Highlights included an experiential campaign using large vinyl stickers across a wide range of local businesses and shops, which in turn linked to the “Peter James’ Brighton” website
    • The campaign delivered another good example of Blippar in action, with significant engagement across the globe (more than 25,000 times in 3 months)

     

The winners were chosen from a list of more than 30 submissions from members of the Book Marketing Society. They were judged by BMS officials (Jo Henry and Alastair Giles, Executive Directors, and Jon Slack, Development Manager) together with Dominic Gettins of European ad agency Havas, Hugh Salmon of the marketing and communications agency The Salmon Agency and Brand Republic blogger, Simon Appleby of publishing web specialists Bookswarm, and Simon Scott, founder of Push Entertainment.

 

 

Related posts