Category: News
Winners of the September-December 2018 BMS Awards
The winning campaigns from the BMS seasonal awards (in association with Total Media) for the September-December 2018 were announced at the BMS member meeting at the new Total Media offices in Soho on Wednesday 27 February 2019.
As always we had a huge number of extremely high quality campaigns – it’s so great to see all the hard work going on across the industry.
In the Adult Fiction category, the winners were Sarah Arratoon, Philippa McEwan, Andy Joannau, Ruth Brooks, and Lee Dibble of Pan Macmillan for Tombland by C. J. Samson. This was a highly cohesive, multi-faceted campaign ensuring all bases were covered, and exceeding all objectives and previous sales records.
The Guerrilla category (for campaigns spends of £2,500) saw the judges give Highly Commended to Tom Noble from Orion Publishing Group for The Holy Vible by Elis James & John Robins campaign for its generally note-perfect execution. This campaign showed a very clear understanding of how to “get the vote out” and maximise fan preorders and included some witty and appropriate touches.
The winning campaign went to Alice Murphy-Pyle of Transworld for Straight Outta Crawley: Memoirs of a Distinctly Average Human Being by Romesh Ranganathan. The judges commented that the campaign that started before it even started, by making a strong case for the author’s (very scarce) time and integrating marketing needs into the whole publication.
In the Multi-Title category, the winners were Jamie Norman, Alan Trotter and Vicki Watson from Canongate for the Canongate Christmas campaign. This was judged as a quirky and distinctly charming campaign, which blended native online advertising with innovative online and physical moments to reach and reward readers across the country.
The judges gave the Highly Commended award in the Children’s category to Hannah Sidorjak of Penguin Random House for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown. The judges said his campaign made the most of a seasonal (wintry) Wimpy Kid with clever creative and well-judged media buying and excellent partnerships.
First place went to freelancer Emily Cox and Natasha Pile from Canongate for The Truth Pixie by Matt Haig, illustrated by Chris Mould, a highly effective and good value campaign for challenging publication. The judges said they didn’t over-rely on the author’s existing brand, but instead extended it into new territory. A concept-led campaign with a lot of creative and carefully honed material (schools packs were superb).
Highly commended in the Non-fiction category was given to Tom Noble and Katie Moss of Orion Publishing Group for their Ordnance Survey Puzzle Book campaign. The campaign’s effective use of the OS mailing list and the neat touches such as the like geographically personalised POS for stores enabled the campaign to compete with some heavy hitting clever- gift opposition published at the same time.
The outright winners were Amelia Fairney, Rose Poole and Poppy North, from Viking for Becoming by Michelle Obama, for their well-crafted and comprehensive campaign that cleverly navigated around limitations and reached both traditional and non-traditional book buyers through strategic partnerships.
Congratulations to all of the winners!
Want to find out about when the next awards open and how to enter? Fancy coming along to an upcoming members’ meeting? Find out how to join the Book Marketing Society here.
Four #BMSShoutOuts from our October meeting
#BMSShoutOut is a chance to celebrate great work from across the industry and inspire the campaigns we’re working on now. See the latest shoutouts we pulled together and presented at the October 2018 member meeting.
If you have something you want to show off or have seen someone else worth talking about, be sure to add in #BMSShoutOut on twitter/FB and Instagram.
Enjoy!
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Beastie Boys Book Rough-Trade Takeover weekend: Hannah Marshall at Faber did a great job with rough trade and it looked like they had loads and loads of fun.
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In at the Deep End by Kate Davies: Congratulations to Fleur Clarke at HarperFiction for the super proofs for In at the Deep End.
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Listening to the Animals by Noel Fitzpatrick: Well done to Amy Davies of Orion for super vet pandemonium in the Orion Lobby.
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Work Like a Woman, Mary Portas: Vicky Palmer and Ella Horne at Transworld for influencer mailing proof, highlighter, flyer, drinks coaster, notepad and great copy.
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Important news about #BMSShoutOuts 2018
Use the hashtag to share your team’s very best bits from across 2018. We will pick out some of the year’s highlights at our 5 December Christmas social. Whether it happened in January or June, reshare, post afresh or just add the hashtag to an old post and we will find it.
BMS best summer campaigns
The winning campaigns from the BMS seasonal awards (in association with Total Media) for the summer (May-August 2018) were announced at the BMS member meeting at HarperCollins’ offices on Wednesday 31 October 2018. The judges again had a hard time picking the winners especially in the Non-Fiction category, which ended up with two highly commended awards and two winners!
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The Adult Fiction category saw the judges give Claire Brett and Jen Porter of HQ (HarperCollins) Highly Commended for their fully-committed, creative and engaging campaign for VOX by Christina Dalcher. The winning campaign went to Jennifer Breslin from Orion for The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton, which the judges thought was an exceedingly clever and fitting campaign that targeted retailers and the book trade effectively. |
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In the Guerrilla category (for campaigns spends of £2,500 or less) Highly Commended was given to Vicky Abbott from Headline for her campaign for Eat, Drink, Run by Bryony Gordon. This campaign included successful tie-ins and interesting audio clips, all resulting in a good return on investment. First place went to Fleur Clarke and Sofia Hericson at Hodder & Stoughton for their highly targeted campaign with strong partnerships and a commendable return on investment and sales for Legendary by Stephanie Garber. |
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Highly Commended was given to the Multi-title category was given to Rosanna Boscawen and Leena Normington from Vintage for their original campaign of promoting classic titles as ideal holiday reads for Vintage Summer. The winner was Madeleine Hall from Virago for the successful increase in social media engagement for Virago Modern Classics 40th Anniversary. |
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In the Children’s category, judges gave two campaigns Highly Commended: Oi Cat! by Kes Gray and Jim Field for the strong brand visuals for maximum impact for Fi Evans from Hachette Children’s and Alex Cowan and Beth Maher at HarperCollins who built on previous campaigns resulting in a better return on investment for Birthday Boy by David Baddiel. The outright winner was Sarah Lough, Faber & Faber, whose campaign successfully targeted teachers with engaging materials resulting in trade success for Secrets of a Sun King by Emma Carroll. |
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Judging the Non-Fiction category proved to be a considerable challenge and two campaigns were awarded Highly Commended as well as two being crowned joint overall winners. Highly Commended was given to Justine Gold at Simon & Schuster for using eye-catching visuals and partnerships for Spitfire by John Nichol, and Alexandra Cooper from Little, Brown for the inspired creation of endurances events for The World’s Fittest Book by Ross Edgley. |
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The joint winners for this category were Jamie Norman, Alan Trotter and Vicki Watson from Canongate for their campaign for a Room to Dream by David Lynch, which included live-streaming a ‘Lynchathon’ and Jodie Mullish at Pan Macmillan for an ingenious campaign retargeting the brand author to a more contemporary audience for Real Food Kids Will Love by Annabel Karmel. |
Congratulations to all our winners!
The BA launches Independent Booksellers’ Children’s Book of the Month
Submissions for Q1 2019 open on Monday 22 October
January 2019 will see the launch of the Independent Booksellers’ Children’s Book of the Month which will be chosen by a panel of independent booksellers, from a range of new children’s titles submitted by publishers.
It will give one new children’s book the opportunity of focused promotion in independent bookshops across the country each month, with the organiser’s stated goal to showcase independent bookshops’ power and unique expertise to drive sales of children’s books.
Emma Bradshaw, Head of Campaigns at the Booksellers Association, said: “We launched the Children’s Book of the Season in Autumn 2017, and it’s proved so popular that we’re delighted to now be relaunching it as a monthly campaign. The Children’s Book of the Month creates a unique platform to celebrate children’s writers and illustrators. It also demonstrates the enormous impact that independent booksellers can make by working together to build readerships for the books they love.”
Submissions are open to books for children aged up to 11 years old across picture books, middle-grade fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, with the genre varying from month to month. Publishers will be invited to submit titles on a quarterly basis, with a maximum of six titles per quarter. Submissions must be published within the quarter – or ideally the month – of promotion, and sequels will not be considered. Full submission details can be found at https://www.booksellers.org.uk/indiebookofthemonth
Submissions for the first quarter of 2019 close on Monday 5 November
Top #BMSShoutOuts from our August meeting
#BMSShoutOut is a chance to celebrate great work from across the industry and inspire the campaigns we’re working on now. See the latest shoutouts we pulled together and presented at the August 2018 member meeting.
If you have something you want to show off or have seen someone else worth talking about, be sure to add in #BMSShoutOut on twitter/FB and instagram.
Enjoy!
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This stylish pre-order competition announcement from Faber’s Niri Bharadia as an Instagram Story of Sally Rooney’s limited edition screen print
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Transworld wanted to show their equal appreciation of indies *and* Waterstones by providing different coloured ‘Bridge of Clay’ proofs — pink/rose gold for indies and cream/yellow-gold for Waterstones. Everybody wins, not to mention a joy to behold | |
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A cracking high-impact design from Matt Clacher at Fourth Estate Books with this LU 12-sheet poster, which used a quote from Celeste Ng to position the ‘shock’ of book but also hint at the uplifting nature of the ending
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This spectacular Christmas window display from Hodder Books at Foyles took over three hours to make (including painstaking attention to each individual snowflake). Well worth the time and energy spent, surrounded by #summer reads. |
Inspiring #BMS ShoutOuts from June member meeting
#BMSShoutOut is a chance to celebrate great work from across the industry and inspire the campaigns we’re working on now. See the latest shoutouts we pulled together and presented at the June 2018 member meeting.
If you have something you want to show off or have seen someone else worth talking about, be sure to add in #BMSShoutOut on twitter/FB and instagram
Enjoy!
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The Familiars by Stacey Bartlett
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The Binding by Bridget Collins
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Recovery by Russell Brand
Russell Brand Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions campaign across formats from Jodie Mullish at Bluebird. The tube ads for hardback were great. They are running phone box ads in East London for the paperback. All the events have all been in non-trad venues like community centres and churches. Rather than theatres and bookshops which could be off-putting to some audiences. |
Jan-April 2018 Campaign Award Winners
The best marketing campaigns for the period January-April 2018 were announced at the Book Marketing Society’s meeting held at the Faber & Faber offices on Wednesday 13 June. Covering the Spring reading period, judges had a hard time picking the winners especially in the Non-Fiction category, which saw a number of titles working to rise above the competition in a crowded space.
Adult Fiction
Judges gave a Highly Commended to two campaigns: The Lido by Libby Page saw Cait Davies and Sarah Benton from Orion employ ‘Lifeguards’ to increase the regional appeal of a very London-centric title and Sarah Shea and Emma Pickard at HarperFiction escalated the sales of a known author though a change in strategy with the campaign for Fern’s Britton’s Coming Home. The outright winner was Chloe Healy from Vintage with an all-encompassing and impressively detailed campaign resulting in impressive sales across all formats for The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar.
Guerilla
For spends of £2,500 or less, this category saw a Highly Commended award go to Emma Petfield from John Murray Press for the campaign for How to Survive the End of the World (when it’s in your own head) by Aaron Gillies. This campaign cleverly used the authenticity of the author’s voice throughout the campaign. First place was given to the diligent and focused campaign from Natalia Cacciatore at Cornerstone for The Girl on the Dancing Horse by Charlotte DuJardin. This was a campaign that could easily have relied on the promotion of the title through the author’s channels instead they were creative in accessing and then leveraging partnership marketing.
Multi-title category
In the closely-fought Multi-title category the WOM4N campaign from Liv Marsden to celebrate the plentiful and talented female writers at 4th Estate was awarded a Highly Commended. The winning campaign, however, was from Rosanna Boscawen, Vintage with Vintage Minis which was a stylish execution of retail activation and brand partnerships.
Children’s
A Highly Commended was given to Sonia Razvi from Penguin Random House Children’s for the solid and well thought-out campaign for A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens. The winner was announced as Kat McKenna from Pan Macmillan for the impressive return on investment for the campaign for Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. The different strands of the audience targeting and clever brand awareness made this a top choice.
Adult Non-Fiction
A thorough, energetic and creative campaign for BOSH! By Henry Firth and Ian Theasby gave Jess Htay, Jen Callahan-Packer and Joanna Rose from HQ a Highly Commended. The winner, however, was Orlando Mowbray from HarperCollins for the campaign for The Doctor’s Kitchen by Dr Rupy Aujla. This campaign took an unknown author and through clever positioning and messaging took him to the top of the iTunes podcast chart and increased his social media following by over 350% as well as achieving high sales in the tricky healthy eating market.
4m listeners are tuning into more than 1,600 podcasts every week
Our last BMS Member meeting, held at the Havas offices in Kings Cross, focused on Audio Marketing. The meeting featured a number of fantastic speakers who provided great insights into the benefits of audio marketing and a fabulous summary of the award-winning HarperCollins campaign for Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.
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“Permission marketing” is alive and well, and nine other things we learned at the BMS Masterclass on (almost) zero budget marketing
March’s Masterclass on (almost) zero budget marketing was a wide-ranging, in-depth session — many thanks to our marketers who presented their campaigns and fielded questions:
- Elke Desanghere (then of Penguin, now Digital Marketing Manager at HarperCollins) on the use of microsites and more during the campaign for Simon Lelic’s The House
- Caitriona Horne (Senior Marketing Manager at Hodder) on the campaign for How Not to Kill Your Plants, and how her team tapped into the millennial mind-set
- Tara Al Azzawi (Senior Marketing Manager at 4th Estate) on her team’s excellent political campaign for Dear Ijeawele
Below are a few of James Spackman‘s key takeaways from the session.
A product can be marketed on the back of a political campaign, if the product and the messages are right. Tara Al Azzawi’s campaign for Dear Ijeawele was explicitly tied to International Women’s Day in a way which was effective and appropriate.
… but get it wrong at your peril. Brewdog got into all sorts of bother with their pink beer.
An “unproduced” feel to social media assets – such as the handmade quote cards for the Dear Ijeawele Twitter photos – emphasises authenticity and commitment.
BMS Awards: Autumn winners announced
The best marketing campaigns for the period September-December 2017 were announced at the Book Marketing Society’s meeting held at Hachette’s offices on 26th March.
There was particularly strong competition in both the Adult Fiction and Guerrillla (for campaigns costing less than £2,500) categories, with the judges choosing two Highly Commended in the first of these, Adult Fiction: firstly, Fleur Clarke’s well-targeted campaign at Hodder for Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties. In addition, Hattie Adam- Smith, Rebecca Ikin, Amber Bennett-Ford of Cornerstone’s (Penguin Random House) stunning in-house campaign for Uncommon Type, a debut short story collection by Tom Hanks. The winner, however, was Sarah Arratoon of Pan Macmillan for her out-of-the-box, intertextual campaign for A Column of Fire by Ken Follett, which used ‘Pigeonhole’ to launch a unique, pre-publication serialisation of the book, and included chapter samples within video game boxes, through an offline partnership with Daedalic.
Highly commended in the Guerrilla campaign category was Victoria Abbott of Headline for her work on A Year of Wonder by Clemency Burton-Hill, creating innovative playlists and bespoke video messages on Apple Music to reach a diverse audience. Heather Keane and Naomi Berwin of Hodder & Stoughton were also highly commended for the creative and far- reaching social media campaign associated with The World Cup of Everything by Richard Osman. But the outstanding winner in this category was the fantastically successful campaign run – on a tiny budget, in an incredibly quick turn-around period- by Flora Willis of Profile Books for Mary Beard’s Women and Power.
In this season’s huge and rich Adult Non-fiction category, Justine Gold’s campaign at Simon & Schuster UK for The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur, John Grindrod’s campaign for Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Crows (Faber and Faber) and Jodie Mullish of Bluebird’s (Pan Macmillan) socially conscious campaign surrounding Russell Brand’s Recovery all received honourable mentions at the awards. A stylish campaign for Nigel Slater’s The Christmas Chronicles, led by Tara Al Azzawi of 4TH Estate Books (Harper Collins) gained a Highly Commended, while Paul Martinovic of Picador (Pan Mac) won the winner’s laurels for his carefully targeted digital marketing campaign for Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt.
Within the multi-title campaign category, Niriksha Bharadia’s campaign surrounding Agatha Christie (Faber & Faber) received an honourable mention, whilst Helen Flood and William Smith’s campaign for Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (Vintage, Penguin Random House) was Highly Commended. The winner within this category was Penguin Random House Children’s Andrea Bowie, Sonia Razvi, Kitty Chivers and Roz Hutchinson, for their creative campaign involving a free online show for schools, Puffin Virtually Live: the Illustrators Takeover.
Highly Commended in the Children’s Category was Elisa Offord of Simon and Schuster’s campaign for Supertato: The Evil Pea Rules! by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet, including a highly successful social media campaign and animated trailer. Emily Finn and Caroline Fleming of Egmont Publishing won the Children’s category for their fun instore campaign at HMV for Where’s the Wookie 2 from Lucasfilm.
The judges for the Autumn campaigns were: Julia Kingsford, Dominic Gettins, Keira O’Brien, Sarah Mulryan, James Spackman, Sam Missingham and joint BMS founders; Jo Henry & Alastair Giles.
Submissions for the next Award season — for campaigns between January and March — open on Tuesday 1 May. More info is available here.
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