Category: News
Without strong visuals everything becomes more forgettable, audience hears at annual BMS/PPC book fair gathering
by Sue Stephens
The Publishers Publicity Circle and Book Marketing Society joint event at the London Book Fair was absolutely packed and this year the subject was The Visual Life of Campaigns. Thanks to everyone who came – you can see the conversations around the event on #visualcampaigns but some brief notes below if you weren’t able to attend:
Preena Gadher chaired (MD and co-founder of the award-winning arts and culture communications agency Riot Communications), leading first onto…
Jack Smyth (a designer from Dublin who has worked in-house and freelanced for Little, Brown Book Group, Tower Records, Wagamama and Cath Kidson amongst others. He currently designs book jackets for Simon and Schuster)
Jack addressed visual language and how we can bring our books to life using visual techniques. He had particular concerns about how we often tend to create our own camouflage.
Jack states that nobody wins in this scenario and that we lose ingenuity, fun and sense of experimentation; it’s creating an environment which is incredibly difficult to navigate around. He also takes exception to pack shots.
Packshots are on virtually all book advertising. This says we are selling a product when what we really should be doing is selling a story. We don’t need to shout; be more brave, be more subtle – be more inventive. We don’t need to give all of the information: there needs to be a bit of mystery to make people want to find out more. There is obviously sometimes merit in riding a market that is newly created to benefit from a cultural phenomenon, but these tend to have a lifespan and then: how do you go beyond that? What you can do is just take a small divergent path to create something entirely new.
Jon Slack (presenting for Naomi Bacon, freelancer and co-director of a consultancy specialising in Marketing, PR, Social Media, and Creative Strategy)
The Power of Pop-ups and immersive events
Visual campaigns can take many forms, Naomi refers to ways in which events can make a difference. She encourages everyone to create events that you yourself would like to go to. We’re all used to a glass of warm wine in a bookshop for a launch and this has its place and will attract the usual book crowd.
But to bring in a wider readership, make more use of partnerships – not just drink sponsorship but lifestyle brands that might be able to create a launch that appeals to a different set of people such as the art, fashion or music crowd.
Two examples that she pointed to were the launch she organised for The Muse; as well as focusing on the book, the event included poetry and discussions, and allowed for shareable content through Snapchat filters and Instagram cards.
And the amazing launch at the Hackney Empire for debut author Robyn Travis – read more about the event here
Julia Kingsford (co-founder of Kingsford Campbell, a literary agency and marketing and publishing consultancy launched in 2014. Prior to this, she was Marketing Director at Foyles before helping found the reading for pleasure charity World Book Night and becoming its CEO in 2011. Julia has also worked at Random House, the BBC and the Barbican).
Julia talked about the smallest and simplest ways in which you can create visual engagement. There are some brilliant online tools that anyone can easily use to make a difference visually. Julia wrote a great blog piece afterwards read here about her presentation and, inspired by the subject, says she will be doing a workshop in the near future with the BMS (stay tuned!)
The big mistake that many make is not to be aware of the space in the timeline when tweeting an image. So you can get unintentional results… an unfortunate example below:
A way to avoid this is to make more use of quote cards and respect the safe space:
Also, to be aware that what really engages is emotion:
Make the audience engage and want to know more:
Experiment with video by creating enchanting visuals through stop motion and BookTubers.
GIFs allow for the life of a book and its marketing campaign to be extended by generating conversations around it.
Find good tools and utilize them, such as Pablo and Stop Motion Studio.
Analyse social media data and decide whether your content should be driving impressions or engagement.
Key Takeaways:
- avoid the camouflage
- sell the story not the product
- be more brave – don’t need to give all of the information, create elements of mystery, less SHOUTING
- cropping – think about the safe space
- events – don’t just target the book crowd, find elements that have a wider appeal and create new environments for new audiences
- ‘immersive’ is a bit overused but create events you would like to go to – Hackney Empire for debut author Robyn Travis – read here
- make it more than the sum of its parts
- visual storytelling
- make use of online tools such as Pablo to create more shareable images
You can link to Naomi Bacon’s slides here
and download a copy of the event’s full presentation.
(thanks to Siobhan Rothwell for her notes contributing to this report)
Why email marketing really does sell books (and 21 other things to think about while we’re at it)
In a recent post on Twitter, marketing whiz and self-declared ‘book champion’ Sam Missingham shared a full suite of her own #bookmarketingtips for the great and the good to share widely. We brought them together for you here, because we’re nice like that.
- Email marketing sells books. Build an email list. Then use it properly (more than once a month).
- BookBub sells books by the shedload – if you can get your book(s) on there, it’s 100% worth the money.
- Put some effort into the design of your emails (most are ghastly). Please, please, please optimise for mobile!
- If people never click on your emails, delete them. Then segment the remaining to optimise open & click through rates.
- Every other industry in the world uses email marketing at the heart of their activity. They don’t do that for fun. It works.
- Every single book marketing campaign should have at least two data capture opportunities (most have none).
- Competitions will return the worst quality data. They are also lazy (although we all do them). Think bigger.
- More generally, if you have no idea where to start with marketing, look very closely at the activity of similar authors.
- Things you should look at – their social feeds, website, email newsletter and the categories they choose on Amazon.
- Authors – your website should work for you. What one thing would you like a visitor to do? Sign up? Download free book?
- You DO NOT need a big budget to do great book marketing. You need ideas, time and energy.
- If you don’t believe 11. let me list the books with big budgets that didn’t sell.
- Facebook offers extraordinary targeting with paid-for ads. Follow @pbackwriter and learn how – look at his courses.
- Never, ever waste money on a book trailer. They DO NOT sell books.
- Social media sells books (nowhere near as well as email) but you should choose social channels you can use properly.
- Do not spread yourself across all social channels and do them all badly. Choose two or three and put energy and time into.
- Not sure what to prioritise? Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads would be my top three. But, different genres work different channels.
- Wherever you choose to focus your social energy, you must commit and engage regularly.
- Working with book bloggers, booktubers and bookstaggramers. Yes, do this. A lot. Use this army of book champions.
- Blog tours work and will reach the most concentrated audience of book-lovers of all of your marketing.
- Encouraging readers to talk about your book as early and as much as possible is key. Georgina Moore (@PublicityBooks) is a master at this.
- If you are worried that someone is ripping you off with secret marketing sauce and trying to get you to spend money, DON’T!
Think you have others to add, or disagree? Join the discussion with Sam back on Twitter or let us know in the comments below.
Winter Season Campaign Award winners
The Award winners for the all-important Christmas season, encompassing campaigns run between September and December 2016, were announced at the Book Marketing Society’s member meeting on 17th February, held at HarperCollins’ offices. With nearly half of all consumer book purchases taking place in the period, many being bought as Christmas gifts, there were some major titles jostling for the Awards.
The Guerrilla Marketing category (campaigns costing less than £2.5k)
- Jodie Mullish and Jessica Farrugia of Bluebird/Pan Macmillan received a Highly Commended for their campaign for their take on the current obsession, How to Hygge with a curated Hygge Weekend.
- The Winner’s laurel went to Aimee Kitson of Constable/Little, Brown Book Group for her exemplary campaign to promote Ian Wright’s latest autobiography, A Life in Football, with great success.
The Children’s category
- Highly Commended for Hannah Sidorjak of PRHC for her cat-lead promotion for the newly discovered Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, illustrated by Quentin Blake.
- Highly
Commended for Hannah Bourne and Andrea Bowie of Puffin for their crumpet-rich campaign for Tom Fletcher’s The Christmasaurus.
- The winning campaign was for another YouTuber star, DanTDM and his book Trayaurus and the Enchanted Crystal, which Anna Bowen of Trapeze/Orion lead to success with effective promotions around the author tour and an online Top Trumps game which achieved over 1 million plays in the first 48 hours.
Commended for Hannah Bourne and Andrea Bowie of Puffin for their crumpet-rich campaign for Tom Fletcher’s The Christmasaurus.
The Adult Non-Fiction category
- Rose Poole of Viking/PRH received a Highly Commended for impressing the judges with her stylish work on Ben Macintyre’s SAS Rogue Heroes.
- Katie Bowden of Michael Joseph/PRH was also awarded a Highly Commended for her highly targeted campaign for the GCHQ Puzzle Book.
- The Winner in this extremely strong category was Paul Martinovic of Penguin/Viking for his hugely successful campaign for John le Carre’s autobiography, The Pigeon Tunnel – only a year after the biography, and without any personal promotion from the author himself.
Rose Poole of Viking/PRH received a Highly Commended for impressing the judges with her stylish work on Ben Macintyre’s SAS Rogue Heroes.
The Multi-title Campaign category
- The team from Pan Macmillan (Katie Roden, Sara Lloyd, Lee Dibble, Tom Noble, Sophie Painter and Eleanor Jones) received a Highly Commended for wowing the judges with their ambitious and technically challenging digital-first campaign to encourage gift book buying, Wrapped with Love Campaign 2016.
- The first of the joint Winners were Alice Morley and Fleur Clarke at Hodder & Stoughton, who put together an impressive day of online events to celebrate Stephen King’s birthday and 8 very different backlist titles in King for the Day.
- The second winning campaign was by Bethan Ferguson and Jeska Lyons of Quercus Books who achieved tremendous success with their highly targeted campaign
for Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups, complete with a specially commissioned short story Five Go Bookselling to gain trade buy-in.
The Adult Fiction category
- Hannah Gamon and Katie Moss of HarperFiction were Highly Commended for their campaign for The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, full of terrible puns and 12 sheet displays at EWEston, BAAAmondsey, LiverWOOL Street – you get the picture!
- The Winners in this category were Vickie Boff and Fleur Clarke of Hodder & Stoughton for their strategic reinvention of Jodi Picoult with an anonymize campaign #readwithoutprejudice for Small Great Things.
Hannah Gamon and Katie Moss of HarperFiction were Highly Commended for their campaign for The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, full of terrible puns and 12 sheet displays at EWEston, BAAAmondsey, LiverWOOL Street – you get the picture!Nine things we learned at the BMS Masterclass on backlist marketing
by James Spackman
Marketers should learn to write like booksellers talk. Caroline Maddison and Claire Wilshaw, creators of the #ByBook multi-title campaign, channeled their inner retailers to persuasively recommend books on their site. The difference to conventional book blurb is striking…
A hashtag is a better listening device than broadcasting tool, said Justine Gold, ex of Little, Brown, in relation to the I [heart] Atwood campaign. If your message is clear and shareable, you don’t necessarily need a hashtag.
A novel is like a plate of food. Inspired by Zainab Juma at Penguin, Caroline Maddison suggested describing books as though they were dishes (ingredients, flavours, size, etc). An extremely handy idea, which I think we will all steal.
… by the same token, Mills & Boon novels are bars of chocolate to their readers, according to Emma Pickard. An indulgent treat that they absolutely know will be enjoyable.
A little Facebook ad spend goes a long way if you’re very specific indeed with your keywords, said Justine Gold and Rachel Wilkie.
Programming Nostalgia is a thing. Matthew Young, designer at Penguin and one of three creators of their groundbreaking Richard Dawkins anniversary campaign, told us that people’s fond memories of obsolete code (Dawkins’ evolution modeler) was a crucial PR draw.
Adopting readers’ vocabulary from their Amazon reviews is a useful shortcut to get just the right voice for a campaign (Caroline and Claire again).
Three is the magic number: designer + programmer + marketer = stunning backlist campaign. That’s how the Dawkins campaign was created, and Matthew Young thought the three-person, three-specialism dynamic was crucial to its success.
The physical presence of books is a powerful draw. The #ByBook video used giant books, being carried, held, used, by human beings. Not so much glorifying the object, but showing it in use.
Spackman also rounded up learnings from the first Spackman masterclass breakfast on marketing adult titles in ‘Nine things we learned at the BMS Marketing Masterclass‘.
Key takeaways from the BMS November Member Meeting
The BMS Member Meeting on the 1st of November was packed with guest speakers featuring case studies and highlights from past campaigns, alongside the announcement of the latest Marketing Campaign Awards covering the period May-August 2016.
Some of the key takeaways from each presentation were:
Janine Giovanni from Transworld on The Unmumsy Mum
- With a marketing budget of only £400 Transworld was able to generate 6,000 preorder sales through creating a fan-generated e-book of funny parenting stories.
- The fan engagement provided real content for the author to discuss during her promotional events, which helped to maintain her authenticity throughout the promotions.
Elisa Offord from Simon & Schuster Children’s on Supertato: Veggies Assemble
- The two themes of healthy eating and literacy were key to the marketing campaign by providing healthy potato recipes and having Community Champions read to children in schools.
- Both children and parents were engaged through the ‘dress up veggies’ activity.
- Partnering with Asda – and in particular their Community Champions – led to awareness stands in 400 stores and resulted in an 18% increase in Asda sales on Hendra’s titles.
Keynote with Glenn Miller on FacebookLive
- Consumer interest in Live has been surging as the medium is “immediate and immersive”. Users gain the unique experience of seeing events from the exact perspective of the person filming – with all the unscripted excitement that this might provide.
- When watching Live everyone is experiencing the same thing, which drives engagement. Glenn indicated that consumers are spending three times longer watching Live than video on demand (VOD).
- Live video is effective for marketing as viewers know that Live will produce a unique experience. Whereas in other formats, consumers skip through content assuming they have already seen it, given that assets are commonly re-used across platforms.
- Live can be used for traditional events i.e. author interviews to reach a new audience. However, it does not need to incorporate speech; it can be used to immerse consumers in an experience.
- Viewers can subscribe and receive notifications when you are going live.
- Tip: Make sure to address fans directly and answer questions. Viewers know you can see their comments, therefore they expect a high level of interactivity and recognition.
- After a Live broadcast, the video becomes a VOD. The playback feature allows you to view fans’ likes and comments, and identify what sparked consumers to share the video to their networks.
- Tip: for higher quality audio recordings, Glenn mentioned that Rode microphones had proven popular with some clients and were reasonably priced.
Sam Missingham on BookGig
- BookGig is a publisher-agnostic platform intended to list all book-related events in the UK in one place.
- Consumers can refine search parameters to find what they want in the 500-1000 events taking place around the UK each week.
- They are eager for more involvement! Contact Sam ([email protected]) to feature on the monthly newsletter and be involved in the planned themes which include:
Tuesday book event ticket giveaway, Wednesday book giveaway, and Throwback Thursday (i.e. linking to a past event when the book launch is coming up).
Ross Fraser (ex John Murray) on Black Box Thinking
- Partnering with LinkedIn, Black Box Thinking’s author Matthew Syde created three bespoke articles around the book’s concept of ‘marginal gains’, in keeping with the theme of his book.
- The articles featured on LinkedIn’s Pulse in different areas i.e. Careers: Getting Started, and Editor’s Pick.
- This collaboration enabled them to target a niche market which was a highly effective channel in conversions to sales.
Annie Woodfield from Nielsen on Backlist Data
- Bookscan TCM data indicated that in 2015 backlist accounted for 44% of the print book market.
- The Books & Consumers survey found most consumers who claim to buy backlist modern fiction paperbacks paid full price. This indicates a large amount of value is being derived from backlist.
- For backlist sales, previous knowledge of the author and/or series is important in discovery.
Summer season Campaign Award winners
The Book MarketingSociety announced the winners of the May-August 2016 Marketing Campaign Awards this evening at the members’ meeting held at Faber & Faber’s offices.
The BMS runs three Seasonal Awards each year to reward the very best campaigns within the industry. For this latest season, entries were judged under a raft of new and redefined categories: Best Adult Fiction and Best Non-fiction above £2.5k, Best Children’s Campaign above £2.5k and Best Shoestring Award (previously for campaigns costing less than £5,000, but now re-focused on campaigns of under £2,500) and a new category: Best Multi-title Campaign.
Campaigns are judged on three main criteria: innovation and creativity; identifying and reaching the target audience and return on investment.
THE WINNERS:
The pure ingenuity of the campaign for Richard Dawkins’ anniversary – promoting three 
of his lesser known backlist titles – undertaken by Claudia Toia of Penguin Books, saw her gain the Award for Best Multi-title campaign. Reviving an algorithm the author had written 30 years ago to stimulate evolution, every single copy of these three books was published with a unique cover design based on the algorithm.
The visually arresting campaign for Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, complete with a Shoreditch billboard of a crow with real features, saw marketer Katie Hall of Faber & Faber receive the Best Adult Fiction campaign Award
An intuitive link to the author’s obsessions and a skillfully conducted social media campaign saw Caroline Butler of Ebury gain the Best Adult Non-fiction campaign Award for Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham.
The triumph of the YouTubers continues, with Naomi Berwin of Hodder & Stoughton receiving the Best Children’s Marketing campaign Award for Generation Next by Oli White, complete with 2,100 signed copies released to celebrate the authors 21st birthday and an animated visual announcement perfectly capturing his personality.
And last – but by no means least – Faber & Faber triumphed again by winning the Award for Best Shoestring campaign for Tim Book Two by Tim Burgess, with marketer Lindsay Terrell leveraging some perfect partnerships and social listening tools to create a very effective campaign for under £2,500.
In addition, the following campaigns were Highly Commended:
- Sarah Arratoon of Pan Macmillan for Love you Dead by Peter James in the Adult Fiction category.
- Caroline Maddison and Claire Wilshaw of Penguin, Puffin and Ladybird for their campaign to promote a disparate set of 22 books related only by being about diverse countries and cultures under the title #ByBook in the Multi-title category.
- Beth Cockeram and Claire Bush of Michael Joseph for their Shoestring campaign promoting Dear Amy by Helen Callaghan.
BMS announce new Award categories for 2016/17 campaign season
The Book Marketing Society has announced new categories for its marketing campaign Awards programme, as the new 2016-17 Awards period gets underway.
The redefined categories will see a clearer split between Adult Fiction and Non-Fiction alongside Children’s, with the ‘shoestring’ category threshold of total campaign spend lowered to £2.5k, halving the previous budget threshold of £5k.
A new category has also been created for “multi-title” campaigns, where marketing activity is geared towards the promotion of backlist titles, or any other grouping of titles coordinated by a single campaign.
The categories now breakdown as follows:
- Adult and Children’s shoestring (up to £2.5k)
- Adult Fiction (above £2.5k)
- Non-Fiction (above £2.5k)
- Children’s (above £2.5k)
- Multi-title campaign (ie backlist, series, or some other grouping of titles)
In addition, judges will be on the lookout throughout the coming year for marketers or marketing teams who could be considered for an ‘outstanding achievement’ award, which would be included as part of the Annual Award announcements in 2017.
Jo Henry, Executive Director of the BMS, said: “We’re keen to encourage a greater diversity of campaigns being submitted by publishers and retailers for these prestigious Awards, and to ensure that those that are submitted are being judged as fairly as possible. These new categories will result in even more fantastic marketing campaigns to applaud and an even greater clarity in the judging process.”
Winners for the 2015/16 Annual Awards were announced at the Bookseller’s Marketing & Publicity conference in June and included Lean in 15 by Joe Wicks, run by Anna Bowen of Bluebird/Pan MacMillan, Vicky Photiou from Ladybird/PRH Children’s was honoured for her campaign for The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep by Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin, and Caroline Maddison and Justine Gold from HarperCollins were awarded the prize for the Shoestring award – for campaigns under £5,000 – for their work on Scrabble Week. Simon & Schuster Children’s won the award for Best Marketing Team 2015/16.
The Awards are part of the Book Marketing Society’s commitment to promoting excellence in book trade marketing. The Seasonal Awards reward the best marketing campaigns every four months now in five categories, and the Annual Awards. The Awards are designed to acknowledge the work of marketing professionals within the book industry. The judges – independent marketing and book trade experts– are particularly looking for a professional approach in the following three areas:
- Innovation and creativity
- Ability to reach and engage the target audience
- A good return on investment
Submissions are now open for the first ‘seasonal’ campaign period (May – August 2016). To enter your campaign please visit
https://www.bookmarketingsociety.co.uk/submit-bms-awards
To view information about previous winners visit
https://www.bookmarketingsociety.co.uk/bms-awards
For further information or to learn more about membership to the BMS, please contact
Jon Slack on [email protected]
S&S Children’s wins BMS ‘Best Marketing Team’ of the year
Marketing campaigns from Pan Macmillan, HarperCollins and PRH Children’s were honoured by the Book Marketing Society’s annual awards revealed at The Bookseller’s Marketing and Publicity Conference yesterday (28th June), while Simon & Schuster Children’s was given a special award for the Best Marketing Team in 2015/16.
The campaign for Lean in 15 by Joe Wicks run by Anna Bowen of Bluebird/Pan MacMillan was judged the winner of the Adult category, beating off competition from Penguin’s Sam Voulters for Little Black Classics, PRH’s Jen Doyle, Chloe Healy and Natalia Cacciatore for Go Set a Watchman by HarperLee and PRH’s Celeste Ward-Best for The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies.
In the Children’s category, Vicky Photiou from Ladybird/PRH Children’s was honoured for her campaign for The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep by Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin. Also in contention for this award were Simon & Schuster’s Elisa Offord for Hamish and the Worldstoppers by Danny Wallace, PRH Children’s’ Jessica Williams, Jannine Saunders and Gemma Rostill for The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett and S&S’s Liz Binks for Dork Diaries: Drama Queen.
Caroline Maddison and Justine Gold from HarperCollins were awarded the prize for the Shoestring award – for campaigns under £5,000 – for their work on Scrabble Week. Also shortlisted for this award were Penguin’s Paul Martinovic for his campaign for Calm by Michael Acton Smith, HarperCollins’ Matt Clacher for A Modern Way to Cook by Anna Jones, Penguin’s Ingrid Matts for The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith and HarperCollins’ Orlando Mowbray for Your Ultimate Body Transformation Plan by Nick Mitchell.
The special award for the Best Marketing Team 2015/16 went to Simon & Schuster Children’s.
Shortlists revealed for the Marketing Campaigns of the Year
With the announcement of the winners for the January-April 2016 season, the full shortlists for the 2015/16 BMS Best Marketing Campaigns of the Year Awards can now be revealed, as follows:
Shoestring Shortlist:
- January to April 2015 winner Paul Martinovic for Calm by Michael Acton Smith (Penguin)
- May to August 2015 joint winners Matt Clacher for A Modern Way to Cook by Anna Jones and Caroline Maddison and Justine Gold for Scrabble Week (HarperCollins UK )
- September to December 2015 winner Ingrid Matts for The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Particular Books/Penguin)
- January to April 2016 winner Orlando Mowbray for Your Ultimate Body Transformation Plan by Nick Mitchell (HarperCollins UK)
Children’s Shortlist:
- January to April 2015 winner Elisa Offord for Hamish and the Worldstoppers by Danny Wallace (Simon & Schuster)
- May to August 2015 winner Jessica Williams, Jannine Saunders and Gemma Rostill for The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett (Penguin Random House Children’s)
- September to December 2015 winner Vicky Photiou for The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep by Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin (Ladybird/PRH Children’s)
January to April 2016 winner Liz Binks for Dork Diaries: Drama Queen by Rachel Renee Russell (Simon & Schuster)
Adult Shortlist:
- January to April 2015 winner Sam Voulters for Little Black Classics (Penguin)
- May to August 2015 winner Jen Doyle, Chloe Healy and Natalia Cacciatore for Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (Cornerstone, PRH)
- September to December 2015 winner Celeste Ward-Best for The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies (Cornerstone/PRH)
- January to April 2016 winner Anna Bowen for Lean in 15 by Joe Wicks (Bluebird/Pan Macmillan)
You can read more about the recent Jan-April 2016 BMS Award winners here: Spring Season BMS Awards
The BMS Annual Awards will be announced at the forthcoming Marketing and Publicity Conference, hosted by the Bookseller magazine on 28th June at Milton Court at the Barbican, London. The conference is a rich opportunity to focus on learning new strategies and tactics to sell more books. The line-up is now complete and we think it’s looking great. The full programme can be viewed here.
Spring Season BMS Award winners
The winners were announced at the Book Marketing Society’s meeting held at Penguin Random House’s Strand offices on 9th June for the Spring season, covering marketing campaigns run between January and April 2016.
At a time of year when publishers typically choose to launch debut novelists or New Year New You campaigns, the judges also noticed a number of food (mainly biscuits) and drink themed promotions.
In the adult category, there were three Highly Commended campaigns. The first, from Fergus Edmondson of Pan Macmillan for So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson came complete with a hashtag-shaped public stocks set up in Shoreditch that successfully embodied the theme of the book; Louisa Macpherson, Julia Pidduck and Jackie Freshfield of W&N/Hachette’s campaign for Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia was praised by the judges for being ‘spot on for the target audience’ – complete with a recipe for pink gin – while September Withers of Transworld/PRH’s striking campaign for debut novel Disclaimer by Renee Knight achieved a Number 1 slot on the Sunday Times Best Seller list & hugely impressive sales. The winning slot was taken, however, by Anna Bowen of Bluebird/Pan Macmillan for Lean in 15 by Joe Wicks. A very long lead in and the release of masses of material up front – including beach work out in the summer and Christmas recipe via Amazon – built up an incredible audience. The book hit the crest of a wave on which it has surfed successfully ever since.
In the Children’s category there was a highly commended for Elisa Offord of Simon & Schuster with her ‘eating veggies is good for you’ campaign for Supertato: Veggies Assemble by Hendra & Linnet, while the winning slot was taken by her colleague Liz Binks, also of Simon & Schuster which harnessed the power of the 8-12 year old ‘Dorkette’ superfans to push Dork Diaries: Drama Queen to the top of the bestseller lists.
In the hotly contested Shoestring category (campaigns under £5k) the judges eyes’ were caught by Merle Bennett of Simon & Schuster’s sensitive and well-targeted campaign for Girl Up by Laura Bates which won a Highly Commended, while the winners laurels were won by Orlando Mowbray of HarperCollins Publishers for his innovative campaign for Your Ultimate Body Transformation Plan by Nick Mitchell, which used the Shazam app VR to reveal additional content of instructional videos.
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