Being an Open Book
As most of you know, I work as a Marketing Director for a book publisher. This year, I’d like to share more with you all about the campaigns I’m working. So to start, we’ve got OPEN BOOK by Jessica Simpson!
I’ve been working on this one since last summer. If you’ve ever wondered about the length of a typical book campaign, it’s about 12-18 months (in an ideal world). But like most industries, there are times where we move on a tighter tight frame. I’ve created marketing campaigns for books that launched within 5 months or even 6 weeks from acquisition!
Throughout the campaign, I worked directly with Jessica’s team (many of them who are part of The Jessica Simpson Collection). I have to say that these group of women are AWESOME. Super smart, engaging and creative. It was really great working on this book launch, which makes me really proud.
This was a challenging campaign on the marketing side since we embargoed the title, so there were no early reads made available. Together, we came up with strategic ways to promote the book to secure pre-orders and create buzz for the launch of her memoir.
Some of the promotional elements we focused on included:
- Digital pre-order incentives: If you ordered the book early and submitted your proof of purchase, you received a discount code for the JS Collection and a digital journal entry.
- Social Media: We promoted a few announcements on Jessica’s social media pages, mainly announcing the book, revealing the book cover, showing photos of Jessica signing thousands of pages for signed editions, and a behind-the-scenes photo of Jessica recording her audiobook.
- Influencer Outreach: We had finished books about 6 weeks prior to the on-sale. We created beautiful boxes decorated with sparrows (a design element from the book), filled with embossed notebooks, branded pencils, personalized notecards, and more!
And our fantastic PR team coordinated some great media that really helped make the book a nationwide trending topic. Some of the early press you may have already seen, but if not, can check out here are:
If you’d like to get a signed copy, or get tickets to Jessica’s book tour, click here for more info! #OpenBook