Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Authors Should Take Note Of Beer Co.'s Super Bowl Ad


The media world is on overload. Each day 300 million hours of video are watched on You Tube. On Facebook, 350 million photographs are uploaded daily. More than 100,000 blogs are created every 24 hours. There are 2,000 books published daily. How does one's message get heard?

One company is taking a smart approach. London-based New Castle beer couldn't afford to spend 4.5 million dollars on a 30-second TV spot to showcase its brew during The Super Bowl. Further, Anheiser-Busch is the main beer sponsor and had thrown enough money at the live event to ward off competitors. New Castle has one third of one percent of the $100 billion beer sector.

New Castle did something brilliant. It decided to get 20-30 non-beer brands to participate in its ad that will air online and on select NBC local affiliates during the Super Bowl. It is getting attention for its novel approach, as evidenced by The New York Times writing about it. Further, social media from the participating companies is creating a bigger buzz.

Could authors and publishers think this way, finding a means to work with each other to get attention and reduce costs?

Cross-promotional ad campaigns make sense. What if you bad a best-selling book, let's say by a really well-known author, and you place an ad for it side by side with s far lesser known author. The ad is not only a reminder to buy the popular book but is a way to create awareness for the unbranded author.

You can do the same with a social media campaign. Link the big and small so that the smaller book gets attention it otherwise would not.

Do something clever like having two different publishers with competing genre leaders join forces to discuss their books. It would be the best road show since Bush Sr. and Clinton teamed up for charitable causes.

How about this: Take the authors of two totally different genres and find a way to combine them. Can a business author tour with a diet and fitness author, or a parenting expert work with a pet expert? Why not?

How about you do a spoof on big-name celebrity book club selections? Or maybe you create a video of a fake book reviewer who hates everything--except your book. Perhaps you show a humorous video of how books are green-lighted and in the end it is a dog that is reading submissions.

New Castle had the right idea. Get others to subsidize your costs and make the campaign itself a media-worthy story.


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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, Media Connect, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

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