Category: News
Random House joins together imprints for group Christmas campaign
For the first time Random House UK is running a digital consumer campaign with ‘handpicked favourites’ for their readers this Christmas, in a group project which has been co-ordinated with half a dozen people from their Marketing and Digital teams across multiple imprints.
The group has created a dedicated microsite (www.giftabook.co.uk) which enables people to browse and shop by recommendation either for a specific recipient (gifts for her, for him, for kids, for teens and stocking fillers) or by popular gift categories (books of the year, humour, cookery, autobiographies). The campaign is a running for four weeks and is supported by online display advertising, paid search and social media targeting.
White Label Productions was tasked with designing their online creative.
Random House said: “We know from our consumer gift research and insight that people really want recommendations when they are shopping. Giftabook.co.uk showcases over 100 specially selected titles, recommended by experts and booklovers at Random House, that readers of all ages and with varied interests can enjoy.”
Foyles launch ‘Patented, FoolProof Gift Acquisition System’ campaign
Foyles has announced the designs for its Christmas 2012 marketing campaign, with the ‘Foyles Bookshop Patented, FoolProof Gift Acquisition System’, a tongue-in-cheek flowchart designed in-house by Jeff Clark, Miriam Robinson, Foyles Head of Marketing, and Heather Baker, Foyles Senior Buyer.
The campaign guides the reader through a series of mildly irreverent yes/no decisions, with the Foyles’ marketing team describing the 16-sheet Central London Underground advertisements, 1000m x 1400m in-store posters and online banners designed “to remind Christmas shoppers that books are wonderful presents, and that Foyles bookshops is the best place to go for advice on buying them.”
Over the next few weeks, segmented versions of a larger flowchart will appear in windows and tables across Foyles five London bookshops and Bristol branch, as well as on Foyles.co.uk and other online platforms. The complete flowchart will then be trailed via social media before appearing on London Underground posters from 10 – 24 December.
Miriam Robinson, Head of Marketing for Foyles said: “We wanted to deliver the message that the beauty of bookshops is that no matter who you’re shopping for, we can find something to match their interests. We also wanted to have a little fun – Christmas shopping can be perceived as stressful but in a good bookshop it should be the opposite – it should be entertainment”.
The flowchart format builds on the design of Foyles’ autumn 2012 events leaflet, also created in house by Simon Heafield and Miriam Robinson.
Winners announced for the May-Aug Marketing Campaign Awards
The winners of the May-August marketing campaign awards have been announced, with Ebury, Palgrave and Macmillan Children’s Books all notching up a win for the season. The new “Shoestring” category proved popular in its first outing, with entries showing impressive levels of creativity and energy to hold their own against the big-budget campaigns.
Louise Jones from Ebury won Best Adult campaign for Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace, and was commended for a ‘hilarious campaign’ with lots of energy and the originality to help sell-in the first fiction book, difficult even from a ‘sleb’ such as Wallace. Louise found the right tone of voice to match the author’s and executed creative ideas throughout including a fully-fledged spoof London paper, resulting in a very good return on investment.
Amy Lines from Macmillan Children’s Books won Best Children’s campaign for Dreamless by Josephine Angelini, against some very stiff competition. The judges felt it was a well-targeted and very comprehensive campaign, which left no stone unturned in finding an audience for this new series. Behavioural research into 13-17 year old girls lead to an intensive online campaign which channelled all activity back to Mykindabook.com, while the publisher partnered with the likes of New Look and generated a strong pre-publication Amazon chart position, excellent click-throughs – and sales.
Claire Morrison from Palgrave was the first winner for Best Shoestring campaign, making the most of a successful ‘arty’ rebranding of the BFI Collection, with a high profile sampling exercise (GQ Man of the Year event) to reach a new audience. This was alongside a well-targeted but very cost effective campaign which increased sales by over 250% and boosted visibility within the trade.
Highly commended campaigns were as follows:
- SHOESTRING
Campaign Title: HHhH, by Laurent Binet
Marketers: Claire Wilshaw & William Smith, Harvill Secker
- CHILDREN’S
Campaign Title: The Hobbit, Tolkein
Marketer: Laura Di Giuseppe, HarperCollins Children’s - ADULT
Campaign Title: Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
Marketer: Dawn Burnett, S&S
To find out more about previous Award winners and the judges, see here.
Search for the book trade’s up and coming talent
The Bookseller has begun its second annual search for its Rising Stars, a listing of the industry’s next generation of leaders and innovators.
The list, to be published in the 21st September issue of The Bookseller, will look at candidates from all areas of the trade including publishers, booksellers, supply chain, publishing technology companies and new digital entrants.
Tom Tivnan, The Bookseller features and supplements editor, who is leading the selection committee with deputy features and supplements editor Felicity Wood, said: “The Rising Stars is about up and comers, but we’re not necessarily talking just about an age-based list. It could be someone brand new to the trade with tonnes of experience outside of it, or even someone who has been in the trade for a long time who has shifted gears to a new, exciting role.”
He added: “Ultimately, what we’re looking for is people who have the vision, talent and creativity to lead the industry in what will certainly be a challenging future.”
The Rising Stars do get noticed. Of the 38 entries on the 2011 list, 16 were promoted or moved companies to take on greater responsibilities. In the last calendar year, for example, Random House’s Dan Franklin stepped up from digital editor to digital publisher; Rebecca Hart went from being the buyer for Foyles Royal Festival Hall and St Pancras locations to managing and opening up the bookseller’s high-profile shop in Westfield Stratford City; and Madeleine Milburn (née Buston) moved from being head of rights at Darley Anderson to setting up her own literary agency.
Anyone wishing to nominate a colleague or themselves or is seeking information about the Rising Stars, can contact Tom Tivnan ([email protected]) or Felicity Wood ([email protected]) by 5th September.
Market for travel guides being challenged by new media and new players
World travelers continue to find more reassurance in printed guidebooks than online information sources
A recent survey by Bowker Market Research in both the UK and the US has found that websites (alongside advice from family and friends) are now the most used source of information when planning a holiday, but that websites from non-guidebook publishers are rated more highly than the online resources provided by traditional travel publishers. In the US, magazines and printed leaflets are the next most used sources of travel information, whilst holiday makers in the UK tend to use online travel forms.
“Travel publishing is at a crossroads. As consumers’ use of the Internet and digital books grows, travel publishers have been investing in developing e-books, apps and websites,” said Jo Henry, director of Bowker Market Research. “This research identifies the information sources travellers are turning to and how satisfied they are. In particular, we explored how digital forms of information compare to physical guide books.”
The research was conducted simultaneously in the U.S. and U.K. Among the revelations: guidebook buyers’ choice of foreign destinations and their pursuit of cultural activities as a major part of their vacation plans were key reasons behind the purchase of printed guidebooks.
Use of social network sites has not crossed into travel planning in either the U.K. or the U.S.; so far, they are mainly tools for sharing pictures and experiences as well as staying in touch with friend.
The 2012 U.K. and U.S. Travel Reports explore the behaviour and attitudes of travellers in three unique categories: guidebook buyers, non-guidebook buyers and non-book buyers. The reports are now available either separately or together, providing a full and detailed analysis of travellers and their information sources, with a commentary by Travel Publishing expert Stephen Mesquita.
For more information please contact James Howitt at [email protected]
BA launches “Find Your Local Bookshop” button for publishers
As part of the Bookseller Association’s Keep Books on the High Street campaign, friends and partners in the book trade are being encouraged to help support bookshops by offering consumers the choice of shopping with their local bookseller, whether on the high street or on their website.
The trade body has created a Find Your Local Bookshop button, which anyone is free to use anywhere on their website. When linked with the URL http://www.booksellers.org.uk/Search-Tools/Bookshop-search.aspx – it will take website users to the BA bookshop search page, where they can search the over 3500 outlets in BA membership. BA members range from single independents in market towns, to campus bookstores, through Christian specialists, to large national bookselling chains and supermarkets. Consumers can search for All BA members, Independents Only and/or Chain and Independent Booksellers – and can then decide whether to buy online or visit their community bookshop.
Download a copy of the button here.
Gardners to support the Indiebound Christmas Books Catalogue
Gardners has announced it will support the Indiebound Christmas Books Catalogue this year and not produce its own consumer-facing catalogue, promoting Christmas Books titles to their customers throughout the Autumn with Sale or Return and discounted offers.
In a statement to customers Gardners said: “After working closely with the Booksellers Association, customers and publishers to assess how best to support independent booksellers, we have decided not to produce a consumer facing Gardners Christmas catalogue for 2012, as we have in recent years. Instead we will be focusing on fully supporting the BA Christmas Books catalogue and IndieBound campaign.
This announcement comes after research showed that the BA’s Christmas Books catalogue was consistently rated higher by its users than catalogues used by other booksellers, particularly on customized services such as overprinting the front and back of the catalogue with shop details.
The deadline for publisher title submissions has been extended to Wednesday 11th July. For further details please contact [email protected].
BMS Campaign Award goes to debut novel promoted through online game
The BMS are delighted to announce that the winner of the Best Marketing Campaign of the Year Award is The Night Circus, published in hardback and ebook by Vintage. This title was one of the most successful literary debuts of 2011, achieving impressive TCM sales in hardback. The stylish and innovative campaign, conceived and managed by Vicki Watson, Roger Bratchell, Dan Franklin and Bethan Jones of Vintage, centered on an online storyworld, which attracted over 13,000 users in the first 2 months and is still gaining new readers, providing an effective launch pad for the paperback in summer 2013.
Alastair Giles, chair of the judging panel, commented:
“The shortlist for the Marketing Campaign of the year was drawn from previous 2011 BMS seasonal Awards, plus, winners from the specific annual award winners – a genuinely diverse and deserving list. In the end the judges could only focus on a campaign which met the challenges of 21st century publishing and book marketing head on: an innovative digital strategy that jointly built a new community for the book and extended the boundaries of storytelling itself online.”
The category winners were:
- BEST BLURB – Tiger Mother by Amy Chua, published by Bloomsbury
- BEST OVERALL PACKAGE – The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published by Puffin
- BEST BREAKTHROUGH CAMPAIGN – The Night Circus, published by Vintage
- BEST PARTNERSHIP – Books and the City, conceived by Simon & Schuster
- BEST BRAND MANAGEMENT – The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney published by Puffin
- INNOVATION – The Way I See it by Alan Sugar, published by Macmillan
You can view the shortlists in full here.
Over the coming weeks as we’ll be posting case studies and blogs which will look in more depth at our winners and shortlists.
Congratulations to all involved!
Fiction Uncovered launches FM radio programme at Foyles
Fiction Uncovered has announced the full programme for their pop-up FM radio station to be hosted at Foyles on Charing Cross Road. The four days (from 20th to 23rd June) will include interviews, panel discussions and live literary salon events, as well as a specially commissioned radio drama by Gabriel Bisset-Smith (Royal Court/Soho Theatre).
Author interviews include all eight Fiction Uncovered authors: Peter Benson, Cressida Connolly, Jill Dawson, Tibor Fischer, Doug Johnston, Susanna Jones, David Park and Dan Rhodes.
There are also additional live interviews with other British writers including Jake Arnott, Stella Duffy, Geoff Dyer, Stuart Evers, Philip Hensher and Courttia Newland.
Hosts for the pop-up radio station are Damian Barr, Katy Guest and Matt Thorne.
Guest panels will discuss:
- Fiction in translation (with English PEN) with Daniel Hahn
- Asians in Bloomsbury (with Wasifiri and Beyond the Frame)
- Crime in fiction (with Cathi Unsworth)
- Diversity in publishing
- Uncovering fiction with Faber Finds Richard Kelly, with Marcel Theroux
- Ethical reading
- Literary fiction as a genre (with The Bookseller’s Philip Jones)
- The impact and worth of specialist fiction prizes (with Catherine Hall)
- Independent Booksellers Week
- Tips for aspiring literary, ethnic minority and SF writers with literary agents and commissioning editors
- Live tweet-ins from readers and writers, and questions from Foyles book buyers
Additional audio content has also kindly been provided by the Royal Society of Literature, Shoreditch Literary Salon, Granta, Faber and Bloomsbury – and includes recordings with Chris Cleave, Ian McEwan, Rachel Seiffert, Jon McGregor, DW Wilson and Roshi Fernando
Listeners in Central London can tune in to 87.9FM or the station will available simultaneously online at www.fictionuncovered.co.uk/radio. Shows will also be available to play from Fiction Uncovered’s website and available for download on iTunes.
Tweet your questions to any guests or panels to @FictUncovered or email [email protected]
BMS Awards: Another notch on the bedpost for Fifty Shades, and success for Tony Robinson’s new children’s series
More success this week for the best-selling Fifty Shades of Grey series, as Sarah Page and the team at Random House won best Adult marketing campaign for the seasonal Jan-April 2012 BMS Awards, with Amy Lines at Macmillan winning the Children’s category for Tony Robinson’s new Weird World of Wonders series.
For Fifty Shades…, the components that impressed judges the most included the incredibly quick turnaround of the campaign – a month from acquisition to books in shops, with ebooks available immediately, and a very focused effort to harness and build on existing buzz. The team’s digital campaign worked across markets and platforms, including enhanced profile on Twitter, a partnership with Mumsnet (perfect targeting), and the UK’s first Google+ hangout the author E.L. James.
The Tony Robinson campaign drew praise for creating a strong digital campaign with a specially designed game from Aardman Creative. There was good coverage of key retailers with bespoke promotions for each, and a strong range of partnerships targeted with the younger audience in mind, including Supercamps, Centre Parcs and Fun Kids radio. All in all it was an impressive engagement that helped launch a potentially very strong series with excellent sales and a great return on investment: 4 million game plays and 150,000 web visits all in one week!
Other campaigns highly commended were:
- The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King (Marketer: Jane Rose, Hodder & Stoughton)
- Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (Marketer: Viviane Basset, Penguin)
- The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (Marketer: Lee Dibble, Pan Macmillan)
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