Category: News
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.
Absent authors can be a marketer’s best friend, and 17 other things we learned at the Brands Masterclass
November 2017 saw our final Breakfast Masterclass of the year with James Spackman. It was another stimulating session with four fascinating talks examining brand authors across the spectrum, including two bold re-positioning campaigns. Thank you to all the presenting marketers for their sharing.
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Key takeaways from the November BMS Members’ Meeting
Our latest member meeting took place at Penguin Random House’s offices on Thursday 1 November. It was packed full of excellent ideas, with three presentations from book marketers who spilled the secrets of their BMS-commended campaigns. For the keynote presentation, VR-guru Catherine Allen gave us a fascinating insight into the possibilities of immersive technology, from useful book marketing suggestions to VR’s ability to build empathetic connections.
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This content is available to BMS Members only. Sign up to receive full access to the BMS Members Area, featuring our Members Directory and a database of BMS Award winning marketing campaigns
BMS summer 2017 awards announced
The best marketing campaigns for the period April-August 2017 were announced at the Book Marketing Society’s meeting held at Random House’s offices on 1st November. The Awards covered the summer reading period and there was particularly fierce competition in the Adult Fiction category, with much experimentation around ebooks used as price-promoted marketing tools for both hardbacks and paperbacks.
Adult Fiction
In the Adult Fiction category the judges gave a Highly Commended to three campaigns: Candice Carty-Williams and Chloe Healy of Vintage’s stylish, movie-like campaign for The Girls by Emma Cline; Sarah Arratoon of Pan Macmillan’s well targeted campaign for Miss You by Kate Eberlen and Stephenie Naulls of Ebury’s campaign for The One by John Marrs, veering between SF and romance. The winners, however, were Sarah Shea and Hannah O’Brien of HarperCollins for their elegant 18-month long campaign for Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman which achieved excellent sales for a hardback debut novel.
Guerrilla
There were two Highly Commended campaigns in the Guerrilla category (for spends of £2,500 or less): Fergus Edmundson of Cornerstone commissioned seven animations to explain the complex economic theory behind each chapter of Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth, while Elke Desanghere of PRH created an effective ‘virtual circle of marketing’ with the campaign for The House by Simon Lelic. The winners in this category were Caitriona Horne and Kate Sinclair of Hodder & Stoughton for their savvy, clever and very cost effective campaign for How Not to Kill Your Plants by Nik Southern, harnessing social media and Habitat to reach the target audiences.
Adult Non-fiction
In the Adult Non-fiction category, an evocative and personalised campaign for Ben Macintyre’s SAS Rogue Heroes by Rose Poole of Viking, and an issue-based campaign for Robert Webb’s How Not to Be a Boy by Vicki Watson and Jenny Fry of Canongate, both gained a Highly Commended, while Ingrid Matts and Julie Woon of Penguin Press gained the winner’s laurels for their bold and provocative campaign – inspired by the film Kill Bill – for Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough.
Children’s
In the Children’s category, a Highly Commended went to the mega-campaign from Grace Whooley and Tram-Anh Doan at Bloomsbury celebrating the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with a genuinely moving video based on fan feedback achieving over 9m views worldwide. The winner, however, was Natasha Collie of Puffin for her high-energy and well-targeted campaign for Tom Fletcher and Greg Abbott’s There’s a Monster in Your Book, including toddler-height bookshop displays and chewable bookmarks.
Multi-title
Highly Commended in the Multi-title Category were Caroline Maddison, Sarah Thrift, Bronagh McDermott and Donna MacKay for their all-encompassing and emotive campaign for Start a Story, a new approach to summer reading. There was a tie in this category in the winners slot, with Rosanna Boscawen and Helen Flood’s immersive and highly successful campaign for Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Hag-Seed chosen jointly with Sarah Benton of Orion’s RebusFest, a celebration of 30 years of the iconic detective through a fabulously curated weekend of books, music, films, whisky tastings, walking tours and much, much more.
Entries open for our next round of Awards on Tuesday 2 January, for campaigns between Sept-Dec 2017. Click here for more information.
The untapped potential of podcasts, and 13 other things we learned at the Debuts Masterclass
Our breakfast Masterclass with James Spackman last month on debut campaigns was a great success — many thanks to everyone who attended and made it such an interesting event. As always, James has compiled a list of his favourite takeaways, featuring secretive male readers, billboard pilgrimages and a digital arms race!
Preorder-driving Facebook ads are a great tool to try out copy lines; Bethan Ferguson, Marketing Director of Quercus, uses them as an inexpensive test-bed.
Podcasts could have untapped marketing potential, particularly for selling audio books. Some publishers are treating individual podcasters as influencers, just like booktubers; others are buying advertising and refining which pods work for which genres.
Word-of-mouth recommendation … do men even do it? Some insight work suggests that men prefer to talk about books which reflect better on their personality (a lot more than women), and – less surprising? – overall, still talk about books much less
Sometimes simple and obvious works best. Hannah O’Brien (Fiction Marketing Director, HarperCollins) described getting scant reaction to FB ads pushing the high concept of a thriller, but then gained great results once they switched to a more straight and traditional “thriller of the year”-type message.NetGalley is at its most effective when you already have some momentum behind your book. Bethan Ferguson described the effectiveness of their solus mailings once they knew The Girl Before was getting attention.
Rival publications can lead to a digital arms race! Facebook budgets for Behind Her Eyes and The Girl Before crept up as each team responded to the others’ successes
A campaign can be all about tone. The Trouble With Goats and Sheep conveyed a memorable motif (sheep) in a witty, warm tone, rather than attempting to explain the novel or brand the author.
Saying “thank you” to retailers and influencers is important, but it has to be genuine. For example, Joanna Cannon forged very real relationships with retailers in the campaign for Goats and Sheep hardback, so her thanking them for their support was a natural – and thus effective – part of the build up to paperback publication.
POS can work brilliantly, but you have to do the groundwork up front. Sending out hundreds of packs for a handful of windows is a bad return on investment.
When a book is being enthusiastically taken up by readers, sometimes the campaign’s primary job is to feed the conversation. Katie Hall’s work for Grief is the Thing with Feathersfocused on the emotional response of readers and gave them things (including video) to share.
Working with TFL involves strict presentation rules. Any poster artwork that looks defaced/graffitied (eg scrawled font) will get rejected, sometimes with as little as 24 hours notice before launch.
Hashtags aren’t always necessary, or even appropriate. The Grief billboard was a site of pilgrimage for fans; an artwork that celebrated the book and which people shared. A hashtag would have made it “marketing”.
A font can convey a subtle message. Using Albertus on Grief was a design cue that bracketed the book with Ted Hughes and other Faber poetry greats …
Booktubers can’t recommend everything … and certainly they won’t love everything they read. Invest time in knowing their tastes and be selective in what you send them, advised Katie Hall.
Our next Masterclass on brand marketing is now fully booked but do contact [email protected] to join our the waiting list.
Book your place at the BMS Christmas Pub Quiz
Tickets are now available for the BMS Christmas Pub Quiz!
Join us at the Betsey Trotwood pub for an evening of festive competition and book marketing miscellany, hosted by Niamh Murray and Flora Willis from Profile Books. There’ll be a welcome drink on arrival before the quiz kicks off, with snacks on offer at half time and plenty of socialising with fellow marketers.
The Betsy Trotwood pub, Thursday 30 November, from 6.30pm till 9.30pm
Admission is open to all BMS members and group registration is available — although you’ll be split up into different teams on the night…
Book your place here. Tickets cost £5 (pay in cash on the door)
Autumn Masterclasses announced with a focus on Debut & Brand campaigns
The BMS Masterclass series with Publisher and Consultant James Spackman is back with two events this autumn, offering members a chance to participate in expert discussion and more, with some of the best marketing brains in the industry.
October’s masterclass event focused on groundbreaking debut campaigns, showcasing marketers who have launched first-time writers with originality and flare. For the second session in November, the emphasis will be on ‘author brand’ marketing, featuring discussions with the people behind Jodi Picoult, Harry Potter, Alan Bennett and Joanna Trollope.
Both Masterclasses are, as ever, an in-depth look at what made them successful, key learnings from each, as well as useful takeaways that can be applied to other campaigns.
The sessions are a great opportunity to benefit from fresh insights and inspiration. Anyone part of a BMS member company is eligible to attend.
We keep the size of the masterclasses small so places are limited. Team packages are available.
Commenting on the Autumn themes James Spackman said: “Debut publications are growing in importance all the time. Creating a buzz from a standing start and bringing real momentum to publication, is one of the areas in which a marketing team can add real value for their company.
Meanwhile the challenges of maintaining and developing a lucrative author or series brand, or rescuing a failing one, are no less significant. Both of these masterclasses will get under the hood of exemplary campaigns which made a big business difference, and I can’t wait to hear more about them.”
Booking information:
When:
Thurs 5 October 2017 – DEBUTS
Thurs 23 Nov 2017 – BRANDS
Sessions run from 9.30am-1pm and include a break for refreshments (entry from 9am)
BRAND CAMPAIGNS:
- Fleur Clarke, Senior Marketing Manager at Hodder & Stoughton, will discuss Jodi Picoult’s latest best-seller, Small Great Things, and the clever ways they’ve been able to keep the Picoult brand fresh
- Ian Lamb, Head of Children’s Publicity at Bloomsbury, on the publisher’s reinvention of the megalithic Harry Potter series for its 20th anniversary
- Niamh Murray, Marketing Director of Profile Books, on Alan Bennett’s Keeping On Keeping On, and Bennett’s continued success in the literary market
- Sarah Arratoon, Head of Marketing Fiction at Pan Macmillan, and Emma Bravo, Pan’s Communications Director, will talk to James about the enormously successful marketing campaign for Joanna Trollope’s City of Friends
–> Booking for the Brands session is available here.
Plus our campaign ‘surgery’ session – bring your dilemmas and the panel will help!
The speakers at our Debuts event were:
- Bethan Ferguson, Managing Director of Quercus, spoke about The Girl Before by J.P. Delaney, and the challenge of marketing crisp new thrillers in a competitive market.
- Katie Hall, Head of Marketing at Faber, on the genius guerilla campaign for the release of the best-selling Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter.
- Hannah Gamon, Fiction Marketing Director at HarperCollins, explained the thinking behind their brilliant campaign for The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon.
Where:
Nielsen Book offices, 5th floor
Endeavour House, 189 Shaftesbury Avenue
London WC2H 8TJ
Price:
£45 per class, or book x3 spots for £120
Bookings:
- Click here for the Brands session.
Places are limited and only available to BMS members (or colleagues working for a member company). For larger team bookings please contact [email protected]
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