Creating a marketing strategy with impact: the award-winning Open Water campaign

At the 2022 British E-book Awards, Alexia Thomaidis and Zoe Coxon of Penguin Basic took the crown for Promoting Approach of the Yr, for their campaign for Open Drinking water by Caleb Azumah Nelson. In this job interview, Alexia and Zoe give insights into how the campaign was created and how it identified as on abilities each within and outdoors the Penguin Common crew. Our many thanks to Zoe and Alexia for sharing their activities with the BookMachine group.

Congratulations on the award! Can you please established the scene and convey to us how the campaign to start with started out, how the e-book came to you and who you to start with collaborated with on the workforce?

Alexia: Open up H2o experienced been acquired a pair of months before I started off at Penguin Basic. When I joined, the excitement for this e book in the team was obvious straight away, this was a guide that everybody was fired up about. When I examine it, I understood I required to get the job done on it! From the really beginning we worked tremendous closely and collaboratively with the entirely fantastic Jane Light and Rosie Safaty who ran the PR campaign and Caleb’s editor, the remarkable Isabel Wall. We were being also blessed to collaborate carefully with Caleb Azumah Nelson, a single of the most difficult-performing and inventive authors!

Zoe: I first encountered Open Drinking water when I joined Penguin Common way too and just identified the synopsis so persuasive that I browse it as soon as Isabel’s edits were done. I loved how Caleb’s use of the 2nd person right away connected with the narrator and gave the book a sense of poetry as perfectly as all of the musical references. When my supervisor questioned me if there was a e book I’d like to do the job on through lockdown, I questioned to be part of the dream team.

How did the lockdown publication influence both of those scheduling and employing the marketing campaign? Did the circumstance current any possibilities you would not have otherwise regarded as?

Alexia and Zoe: With bookshops becoming closed, we understood it was much more critical than ever that we had an helpful digital campaign Gavin Hilzbrich (Moonage) ran digital promoting across Facebook and Instagram for us. We ran social ads for pre-publication and on publication as very well as a burst to coincide with bookshops reopening. With lockdown, we knew that a lot of people were paying out a great deal a lot more time on line, and a way to tap into a young digitally engaged demographic was by YouTube promotion we used our Open up Drinking water trailer inventive for this. As Caleb couldn’t do dwell activities owing to the lockdown constraints, we also organized for a good deal of Instagram are living classes with smaller sized influencer accounts such as Black History of Artwork and DopeReadersClub.

We realized this was a challenging time for the substantial avenue, so we labored collaboratively and reactively with retailers, furnishing assets and distinctive material to independents, and operating intently with Waterstones and Foyles. We worked with vendors at each individual step from the deal with expose to the Open Water trailer start as very well as giving exceptional articles for their weblogs. Caleb is a dream to get the job done with – collaborative, trusting that everything we requested him to do had price (and performing it expertly!), and understands innately the importance of constructing bookseller interactions. It was extraordinary how substantially help the book had from booksellers on line whilst the outlets experienced been closed.

What was the most critical element of your approach when building that pre-publication excitement and driving pre-orders?

Alexia and Zoe: The include of Open up Drinking water had the most unbelievable response online following our include reveal, so we required the deal with to be the aim of the marketing artistic. We actually desired to showcase the beautiful address and get it out to as many viewers, bloggers, influencers and media as soon as achievable. Early awareness and assistance was crucial to the campaign and one of our initially moves was to prioritise a large proof amount for PRH’s BAME group, Colour(Comprehensive). All proofs were snapped up within just 24 several hours and above the course of the yr, those early readers became vocal champions of Caleb and his function. 

We also made sure there had been an abundance of proofs to share with colleagues so they could be part of the enjoyment – some of the book’s finest champions experienced almost nothing to do with the campaign. The whole comms team was totally invested in Caleb’s success, as have been colleagues throughout the division and the entire business enterprise. E book bloggers embraced Open up H2o wholeheartedly much too and the groundswell of word-of-mouth assistance across social media was extraordinary. They all are worthy of a huge thank you!

The British E book Award judges were impressed that your marketing ‘created one thing out of nothing’ and positioned Caleb Azumah Nelson, a debut author, as a main new expertise. What challenges does breaking a new writer into the marketplace arrive with and how did you locate your way around those?

Alexia and Zoe: It requires a village to publish a debut that stands out as there are a great deal of books out there and visitors are tougher to influence to pick up an writer they really do not know. Making use of the amazing early author endorsements from Candice Carty-Williams, Yaa Gyasi and quite a few other folks truly aided to generate a excitement all-around Caleb. It remaining a stunning story of Black appreciate that has the central couple photographed front and centre on the address aided a whole lot way too. It’s not viewed in mainstream literature or on-screen enough and it seriously related with visitors.

We also wanted to continue to keep the campaign as close to Caleb’s eyesight as doable which we felt definitely designed the campaign experience clean and remarkable. An case in point of this is when we worked intently with Caleb and producer and director Justin Marosa to aid Caleb’s vision for the bespoke Open H2o trailer featuring actors Adwoa Akoto (I Might Damage You) and Martins Imhangbe (Bridgerton).This was a opportunity to make anything that was fascinating and to generate recognition for Open up Water.

Can you convey to us much more about performing with inclusion consultancy The Unmistakables? What advice would you give to other folks in publishing wondering about participating consultants for their very own campaigns?

Alexia and Zoe: It was extremely useful. We knew that this was a ebook to be savored by all people, but at the similar time, with a Black writer composing a Black British really like story, it was vital to us to be certain the marketing campaign actively provided personal voice audience as we realized it would particularly resonate with them. The two of us really do not have that lived practical experience, so we have blind places and unconscious biases that the session served us to interrogate. For case in point, one of the comps we have been utilizing was Typical Folks as an additional brilliant modern enjoy tale, but it was not a guide or Television set sequence that every person in the session experienced examine or viewed on their own.

Have any promoting campaigns (bookish or usually) stayed with you as becoming especially effective, or have any caught your attention a short while ago?

Alexia: I’ve been in awe of the campaign for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, it is been so creative from the commence. I genuinely liked the proofs that were being made to glimpse like a video clip recreation circumstance, and they’ve manufactured the online video game that appears in the reserve, so awesome!

Zoe: I seriously liked the latest marketing campaign for the final period of Derry Girls. It oozed ’90s nostalgia from the Smash Hits magazine address to the TikTok filter to the Spotify mixtapes.

Alexia Thomaidis joined Penguin Common in December 2019, possessing begun her vocation at HarperCollins. She is presently Strategies Supervisor throughout the Viking, Hamish Hamilton and Fig Tree imprints. 

Zoe Coxon joined Penguin Standard in January 2020 owning commenced her copywriting occupation at merchants Warehouse and Paperchase. She is presently the Innovative and Search engine optimization Copywriter on the Advertising and marketing workforce, where by she functions across all titles on the publisher’s checklist aiding them to navigate the electronic marketing and advertising landscape and make confident that all the duplicate for their books appeals on the net.