Report 2013 - Kelly Fagan HERE - Australian Publishers Association

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The Evolution of Marketing and Publicity Activities (cont.) Collingridge believes that the reason campaigns stick so rigidly to these formulas of posters and trade promotion is that ‘there is not – nor has there ever been – any empirical understanding of which combination of marketing strategy and tactics works.’ 49 To this end Collingridge created Bookseer, ‘a market intelligence service for books’. Bookseer captures the real-time data ‘exhaust’ of the web, combines it with promotional information provided by the publisher, and builds a picture of the variations in performance of thousands of titles. ‘Bookseer collects as much information about these books as possible. It captures price on Amazon, hourly sales rank, print and e-book sales data (uploaded by the publisher), what is being said about a book or author on Twitter, Facebook or in the media, and on the wider web, which marketing is being engaged with, the makeup of bestseller charts and so on.’ 50 I was interested to learn from Collingridge that after early excitement Bookseer failed to gain any real traction with UK Publishers – and indeed several marketing managers that I spoke to were either unenthusiastic about its usefulness to them or were unaware of its existence altogether. I asked Collingridge via email why he thought this was and he listed the following thoughts: ▪▪ Fear: maybe data shows they are bad at their jobs or waste money on stuff that doesn’t work ▪▪ Inertia: change is hard ▪▪ Lack of technical proficiency ▪▪ Lack of data skills ▪▪ Lack of a CEO telling them this is important 51 From my limited experience in UK, I have to wonder however, if the reason that the service failed to gain traction with publishers is cost. That’s not to say that what Collingridge is suggesting here is untrue, just that publishers already pay for and have access to data on their campaigns and sales: through Nielsen Bookscan; through marketing and media monitoring agencies; through social analytics companies; and, to some extent, through Amazon rankings. Whilst the idea of a tool that can pull all of this information into one report does sound appealing, is it worth the cost on a campaign by campaign basis My suspicion is that publishing houses are already looking into the creation of such reports in-house, and so were reluctant to take on the extra spend. So is a poster campaign in 2013 the same as a poster campaign ten years ago, as Collingridge asserts Sara Lloyd says not: ‘Where marketing does remain in more traditional media, from broadcast to outside to print media and so on, digital features are going to become included in all of these areas. Digital elements such as QR codes or digital tagging, calls to action online, call-outs for digital channels will all become part of the campaign. And they are becoming part of the campaign where I work.’ 52 49 http://www.enhanced-editions.com/blog/2012/02/book-promotion-analytics-and-a-new-marketing-approach-for-publishers/ 50 http://www.enhanced-editions.com/blog/2012/02/book-promotion-analytics-and-a-new-marketing-approach-for-publishers/ 51 Email interview with Peter Collingridge, Publishing Entrepreneur, 9th November 2013 52 Transcript of Dutch Foundation for Literature 8th International Non-Fiction Conference, 29 January 2011 (courtesy of Peter Collingridge) Author: Kelly Fagan 16
The Evolution of Marketing and Publicity Activities (cont.) Certainly a closer look at the award-winners mentioned above shows this to be the case. The Gone Girl paperback campaign featured widespread outdoor advertising, with a call to action asking readers to tweet what they think. The creative for the posters was also unique. Two quotes from the male and female protagonists were contrasted side-by-side to show the two points of view – reinforcing the tagline ‘there are two sides to every story’ – and appealing to both men and women. Topsy.com analysis of Twitter shows over twenty-four thousand tweets were generated in the UK using the ‘gonegirl’ hashtag in the first three months of the campaign (Jan 2013-March 2013). Some of the more influential tweets came from traditional media and traditional retailers – @Waterstones with seventy-nine thousand followers and @guardianbooks with five hundred and ninety-nine thousand followers, used both the hashtag and tag line in their tweets to users. Of course, it is impossible to draw a direct line from this activity to actual sales. Gone Girl had been published to significant success and acclaim in both hardback in the UK and was number one in the US at the time this poster campaign began. The reviews online and across traditional media were overwhelmingly positive. The point of referencing this campaign, however, is to show how a simple poster campaign can amplify positive communication around a book. The messages in these posters were repeated online again and again, and it is a great example of compiling all of the elements into a persuasive form of mass communication. For me, the other interesting thing about this campaign is its timing. Scheduled alongside the paperback release, six months after the original hardback publication – this is a highly visible campaign that perpetuates the already extremely good word of mouth generated by more traditional means. 51 Email interview with Peter Collingridge, Publishing Entrepreneur, 9th November 2013 52 Transcript of Dutch Foundation for Literature 8th International Non-Fiction Conference, 29 January 2011 (courtesy of Peter Collingridge) Author: Kelly Fagan 17
Page 1 and 2: A Very Long Engagement: how the new
Page 3 and 4: Overview With book marketing, every
Page 5 and 6: Key Findings 1. Differences/similar
Page 7 and 8: The Australian Retail Space In Aust
Page 9 and 10: An Australian book consumer benchma
Page 11 and 12: The UK Retail Space When I approach
Page 13 and 14: The UK Media Space (cont.) As in Au
Page 15 and 16: Marketing and Publicity Department
Page 17: The Evolution of Marketing and Publ
Page 21 and 22: The Evolution of Marketing and Publ
Page 23 and 24: What Does it Mean to Connect Direct
Page 25 and 26: What Does it Mean to Connect Direct
Page 27 and 28: Cross Industry Collaboration In thi
Page 29 and 30: Conclusion jThis report led me down

Report 2013 - Kelly Fagan HERE - Australian Publishers Association

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