Campaign: British Book Awards win over consumers - Consumer PR

To increase the BBA's effectiveness as a sales tool. To turn the BBA into a consumer media event and raise its profile with consumers.

Strategy and Plan

Because a TV broadcast of the ceremony would dramatically increase awareness of the BBA with consumers, Midas decided to split the awards into two separate trade and consumer category events. It then identified TV production agencies that would be willing to cover the shorter consumer awards ceremony on 7 April.

The PR team then helped Publishing News broker a deal with Cactus TV, maker of Richard & Judy. As Richard and Judy were committed to hosting the consumer event, Cactus came up with the idea to run a new award, the Richard & Judy Best Read. The firm persuaded the presenters to promote it by shortlisting books on their show.

When weekly sales of the books featured rose to record levels, Midas used this as a news hook to get national arts correspondents and trade press interested in the BBA. The team also highlighted other shortlists to gain consumer news coverage, such as the fact that England rugby captain Martin Johnson was up against England football captain David Beckham in the Sports Book of the Year category.

It was thought that a high-profile celebrity would generate news reports of the event, so a special sales award for Beckham was created. Although Beckham was unable to accept the award in person, Midas arranged a pre-recorded acceptance speech and used screen grabs from the video as photos.

This ensured that the tabloids had photo coverage of the awards.

Broadsheets and tabloids were targeted by sending out embargoed press releases tailored to suit different newspaper audiences with quotes from various winners. Press associations and photography departments were also targeted, and the BBC was given exclusive TV and radio interviews with winners, including Eats, Shoots and Leaves author Lynne Truss.

Measurement and Evaluation

More than 500 pieces of coverage appeared across all the major daily and Sunday nationals, 11 consumer magazines, six TV channels - including MTV and CNN - ten radio stations, 16 regional newspapers and numerous internet sites, resulting in a 30 per cent increase in mentions of Publishing News over last year's event. International coverage was up 50 per cent on last year, with articles in 35 foreign newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times.

Results

Around 2.5 million people watched the BBA consumer show on TV. Sales of titles featured on Richard & Judy increased by up to 350 per cent, and sales of winning titles saw a 50 per cent increase. Nine out of ten top-selling titles in Borders were BBA winners.

'Using Beckham was a good publicity stunt and the press release was well structured,' says The Press Association showbusiness and arts editor Anita Singh. 'They flagged up the newsworthy points and highlighted the celebrity angle.'

'The Richard & Judy tie-in was a brilliant idea,' adds The Bookseller contributing editor Danuta Kean.

'As a rival of Publishing News we were not keen to cover the story, but the phenomenal sales figures resulting from the campaign meant it was a real story.'