"Book ad?"
Katsuko Sakai was the first to notice the Scholastic Group's trademark that flashed on the mobile phone screen.
She said casually: "Gu Jun, have you noticed that more and more publishers and film companies are beginning to adjust their publicity centers to related fields on the Internet. My brother Gangchang wants to collect a picture of this year's releases I kept the illustrated poster for the release of "Slam Dunk" that I liked very well as a souvenir, and I had to walk several streets to find it."
Major foreign book publishers have their own traditional publicity and distribution methods with a long history.
Common methods range from posting promotional posters on the street to holding readers' meetings. These methods were already very mature even in the 19th century when Maupassant and Dumas published books.
Incidentally.
Don’t underestimate the posters and illustrations posted by publishers on the streets. They have always been an important trading category of illustration art.
It not only has publicity value, but also has collection value.
Many enthusiasts are willing to collect early promotional posters such as Mickey Mouse, Poof Bear, Tom and Jerry, and Iron Man in various pawn shops and flea markets in North America.
The famous Larry Gagosian's art business empire started by reselling illustrations for 50 cents a piece on the balcony of New York's red light district.
As YouTube and TIKTOK began to occupy the social center of people's lives.
The focus of book promotion channels has also begun to shift towards Internet advertising.
Last year, Barnes & Noble, the largest physical bookstore seller in North America, successfully sold its boring Mary Sue school romance "How I Become Beautiful in Summer", which attracted nearly one million readers through marketing promotion on TIKTOK. readers' attention.
After it topped the New York Times bestseller list for six weeks, making more than 10 million in revenue, and was announced by Amazon Streaming Media to buy the rights and adapt it into a TV series.
Even in book marketing, the term "BOOKTOK" was born specifically for the marketing plan.
Regardless of the quality of the book.
As long as we can attract enough viewers to discuss the topic on the self-media video platform, which is a battleground for military strategists.
It means sales success.
"Unfortunately, it may be an innovation in business, but the publicity and distribution of this kind of video is becoming more and more homogeneous, and it is difficult to attract my attention. There is not yet a poster on the street that is beautiful and exquisite enough to attract my interest. . It may not be a good thing for illustrators.”
Katsuko Sakai cut a piece of beef and put it in her mouth without the slightest interest in what was playing on the screen.
She has a somewhat negative view of this kind of online book marketing.
This was the first time Ms. Sakai saw the Scholastic Group advertisement on YouTube.
But now that the paper publishing industry is so big, all the new books that major publishers focus on will be pushed hard on short video websites.
As long as you are in contact with people on Twitter and Douyin, it is almost impossible to avoid similar traffic exposure.
Katsuko Sakai has seen many similar advertisements.
Various similar scholars promoted it, and invited several film and television stars, sports stars and other celebrities to endorse the book in front of the camera, talking about how much they loved the book.
The same script routine changes the title of the book and shoots it back and forth.
After the initial novelty wears off, people are tired and tired of seeing it.
Katsuko Sakai is a painter.
In her mind, this kind of Facebook promotion method for books is not even as meaningful and profound as the original colorful illustration posters carefully designed by first-line illustration studios.
The previous propaganda illustrations can be preserved for one hundred or two hundred years.
In the early years, the illustrator drew an illustrated poster for Victor Hugo's romantic drama "Ernany" when it was screened at the Opéra Française on February 25, 1830. It is still carefully hung in the lobby of the Opera House.
And these self-media push ads are nothing more than a burning nicotine cigarette in a fragmented era.
After the initial numbing stimulation, it will be completely forgotten.
The average time they stay in people's brains is really only the time of a cigarette.
Sakai Katsuko is also not optimistic about the Scholastic Group's ability to produce any special and innovative promotional works.
"My YouTube family membership account has two shared quotas that no one is using. I will send you an email later and you can click on the link to pull you in. This way, you can skip these without wasting time in the future. It’s a boring promotional advertisement.”
Sakai Katsuko suggested while using her clean left hand that had not touched food to hover over the screen of Gu Weijing's mobile phone standing by the window.
She planned to skip the commercial after waiting for the first ten seconds of mandatory viewing.
While talking,
The publisher's logo has been hidden, and the advertisement has officially started to play.
It was completely beyond the girl's expectations.
No boring promotional messages.
There was no shot of actress Jennifer Lawrence sitting on a chair as expected by Katsuko Sakai, holding a copy of Colin Hoover's new book and talking about how she drew the power contained in women from it (note).
(Note: This is the most classic book promotion advertising template today. Colin Hoover is the most famous Tiktok celebrity writer in the West in 2021 and 2022, with annual sales approaching US$100 million. At its peak some time ago, TIktok overseas version of book promotion Two-thirds of the column is devoted to ads about the best-selling queen.)
The first image is a close-up of a crying little girl.
"Wow……"
All shots are clips of real scenes.
However, due to technical reasons in the dubbing, the crying sound was dubbed later by the advertising team.
The little girl's unique cry of grievance came from the speaker of the mobile phone, startling Sakai Shengzi and Gu Weijing who were eating.
"What kind of unusual unfolding of God is this?"
Sakai Katsuko raised an eyebrow.
In the highly homogeneous advertising field, showing a crying little girl is completely confusing.
But no matter what.
Ms. Sakai, who was waiting to skip the commercial, was full of anticipation to continue watching, but was aroused by the strange opening of the commercial.
Gu Weijing was just taking the mussels from the plate.
He wasn't staring at the screen. He was so startled by the sudden cry of the little girl that he almost pressed his fingers into the still hot sauce.
Gu Weijing's first reaction was that it was little Jasmine who was crying.
He turned around and saw Jasmine, who was sitting next to them. Her short head and half of her neck could only be exposed, and she was sitting there with her head bent on a stack of white truffle buns.
He breathed a sigh of relief and complained: "What? The little girl came up crying. Is this a book advertisement or a diaper advertisement?"
"Jasmine is better than this kid. She never cries."
Sakai Katsuko patted Jasmine’s little head and said with a smile.
When they made such a joke, ten seconds had already passed, including the initial moments when the logo was displayed.
The [Skip] logo to skip ads has appeared in the lower right corner of the YouTube video.
"Wait a minute and watch it for a few more seconds. It seems quite interesting." Sakai Katsuko said to her boyfriend.
She didn't skip right away.
When curiosity is not satisfied, it feels quite uncomfortable.
When people browse short videos and see a particularly eye-catching title, even if their fingers have inadvertently swiped past the video, they will go back and take a look. That's the truth.
And Katsuko Sakai is ready to wait until she sees what happened to this little girl before skipping this advertisement.
Especially when a line of English description appeared in the upper left corner of the advertisement [The content of this advertisement is actually collected, captured in real scenes, and not a plot interpretation effect].
Sakai Katsuko's inquisitive mentality of wanting to see what the advertising team was up to was even more seduced.
But the filming team was unwilling to follow the routine.
Advertising is not a long TV series. The key point is to be fast, accurate and ruthless, and to instill all the information into the audience in a very short time.
It just captured the audience's interest.
The screen suddenly turned black without warning like a movie trailer, and a line of golden promotional text was quickly inserted——
[This Easter, 130 illustration collections, 987 popular science books, 3753 youth and adult books, and countless timeless text classics are here to meet you. 】
Then it immediately cut back to the shot of the little girl.
At this time, in the picture, a blond girl handed a colorful fairy tale book to a little girl with missing teeth.
The little black girl rubbed her head in her mother's arms and carefully took the book.
The plot is simple and direct, without any dubbing or subtitle assistance, anyone can understand what is happening.
It’s just that the next few seconds of footage are nothing short of magic.
As the golden fairy tale book is passed between adults and children.
The cries faded,
Gradually it fell into silence.
The black girl looked quietly at the illustrated cover in her hand.
The sadness between her eyebrows melted away so naturally and dissipated on her cheeks.
There were still light traces of tears on the girl's face.
The last drop of unshed tears still hung on her lips, but the corners of her eyes were already curved like crescent moons.
The glacier breaks,
Spring is in full bloom.
Such drastic changes in facial expressions, if performed by stage actors, would definitely be criticized by critics as excessive force, and considered to be unnatural expressions and incoherent emotions.
But when everything is a true expression without script arrangements.
Then there will be only shock instead.
The smile of a little girl is the most touching image in the world.
It is rooted in the human gene's instinct to protect cubs. Regardless of gender, even the murderer of a heinous serial murder case will be moved by such a smile as long as the last trace of humanity in his heart has not been completely wiped out.
"So beautiful."
Sakai Katsuko sighed, and her face couldn't help but reveal a look of overflowing motherhood.
That kind of ignorant, innocent, and heartfelt smile.
Even if McKenna Grace, a professional young actress and the most famous child actor in Hollywood of the new generation, was hired to star in the film, she would not be able to produce such a natural and unadorned effect.
This was a smile that was so refreshing that it softened Miss Katsuko's heart.
"It's beautiful."
Katsuko Sakai felt that this smile reminded her of Dante Rossetti's masterpiece "The Smiling Little Angel" that she had seen at the Taylor Art Gallery in London - in that painting, there was a cloud in the horizon. The beam of light hit the face of the girl with rosy cheeks, melting the sadness on the face of the girl in the painting, and joy began to rise from the bottom of her heart.
"I see heaven, see all the goodness in the world, see the holy light shining all over the world, smile from the top of my heart, without dirt or dust." She whispered softly to Rossetti's religious essay written in the corner of the canvas.
From a conceptual point of view, Rossetti's work is actually a revelation painting, that is, a work depicting the so-called "divine revelation" or recording a "moment of religious manifestation."
A very important political task for early Western painters was to paint these types of propaganda posters, which served as a loudspeaker and loudspeaker for the church.
The creativity of the paintings is not too new.
It simply expresses that no matter how difficult life is, Heavenly Father loves the world. When the light from heaven shines down, there will be peace and joy in it.
In the religious paintings of that era, the protagonists must of course be white.
Miss Katsuko still felt that the expression on the cheek of the black girl in front of her was so similar to the protagonist of the religious revelation painting.
The smile comes from the heart, without dirt or dust. This description is extremely appropriate at this moment.
Fairy tale books are a divine revelation for children.
The kind of intoxication and happiness that appear in the eyes of a child when he sees the beauty of art.
No matter how many times I see a painter like Sakai Katsuko, I can never get enough.
"Gu Jun, that smile is so cute. If one day I can draw a painting that makes children smile like this, it will definitely be one of the most meaningful works in my life."
Sakai Katsuko said with a heartfelt smile.
Gu Weijing didn't answer. The moment the blonde girl took out the fairy tale book, he looked a little weird and was looking at the screen without saying a word.
On the other hand, the little girl Jasmine next to her who was busy stuffing French ham buns the size of finger potatoes into her mouth was also attracted by the close-up of this smile.
She blinked and asked curiously: "Sister, what is the book that girl is holding in her hand?"
Hear Jasmine's question.
Katsuko Sakai wanted to pause the scene and save this smile as painting material on her mobile phone.
She was also curious about the title of this fairy tale book that made a little girl cry into a smile.
Which children's picture book is this, and how well should the cover illustration be drawn to achieve such an effect?
Has Jane Arnold collaborated with Scholastic Group to launch a new book again?
Or maybe there’s nothing special about fairy tale books.
Is it just that the right time, the right place, the right people, and the right people just happened to form a coincidence that impressed this child?
Katsuko Sakai pressed the screen and found that there was no pause. Instead, I jumped to the Scholastic Group’s promotional homepage on Amazon, and suddenly realized that this was an advertisement that could not be paused.
Katsuko Sakai quickly returned to the page and wanted to press the volume and menu keys at the same time to take a screenshot.
Regrettably.
At this moment, the advertisement turned black again and entered a new slogan.
[Scholastic Publishing Group allows children to encounter a beautiful world through reading. 】
The live-action feature film about a little black girl ends.
After it lit up again, the screen began to play the only shot in the commercial that was synthesized with computer special effects.
In a huge bookstore.
The video footage moves quickly along the shelves, and every book in the footage is a classic book produced by the Scholastic Group.
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", "Miracle of Oz", "The Train Bazaar", "Memoirs of World War II"...
Countless well-known literary IPs passed by the camera.
The camera flashed faster and faster.
At the beginning, you can also see the book cover with all the beards and tails. Later, there was only a vague shadow. Until the end, the picture stopped at the cover of the book in the little girl's hand.
"This is..." Sakai Katsuko murmured to herself as she opened her eyes wide, trying to see the name of the book clearly.
The advertising lens paused slightly for a brief moment, then instantly sank into the cover of the book.
Let the golden beach in that illustration occupy every corner of the screen.
The previous slogans were all gold characters on a black background, but now the advertising team cleverly reversed it and turned it into black characters written on a golden desert, leaving a deeper impression on the audience.
[In the Easter book season, Scholastic Group’s flagship book list will be launched on March 25th. 】
[Available in all major book dealers and Amazon e-commerce platform. 】
【See you there or see you! 】
Exactly thirty seconds later, the commercial ends.
Let’s officially enter the text of the YouTube video.
"Wait, Shocking is on the market? Hey, Shocking is on the market, what's going on? Why don't you even mention the title of the book, and you deliberately blur it out? Damn it."
Sakai Katsuko still doesn’t remember that she originally wanted to skip the commercial.
Seeing that the promotional video of Scholastic Group ended without any end, she felt a huge sense of loss in her heart.
"Crack!"
Ms. Katsuko paused the main content of the video that had just started playing.
"Which team designed this advertisement?" She complained helplessly.
It seems that the advertising team specifically wants to arouse people's curiosity, and then says "If you want to know, I won't tell you" in a coquettish way.
The close-up of the fairy tale book in the little girl's hand only stayed in front of the camera for less than half a second.
The advertising team also used a very low-level frosted filter on the lens, making it impossible to see the specific content and text clearly.
Sakai Katsuko could only vaguely feel from a hazy impression that it should be a very exquisitely designed illustration.
However, she couldn't see the specific content clearly.
The advertisement sets the stage for all the atmosphere.
In the end, only one launch date was suddenly announced, leaving the audience to wait in anticipation.
Too cheap!
To put it bluntly, this is actually a typical method of creating "mysterious gimmicks" in advertising psychology.
The wealthy film industry does not use this method much, but is more commonly used by some technology manufacturers or fashion show press conferences.
A few months before a major manufacturer's press conference, various technology KOLs frequently leaked rumors that the manufacturer would produce something "epoch-making and ruthless" by then.
Or every year before the E3 game show, there will also be rumors that a certain manufacturer will produce a new 3A-level game IP and so on.
The advantage of this method is that it can gain greater attention with the same publicity cost.
Mystery can be contagious like a virus. People's curiosity spreads from person to person, and non-target people who have no interest in this field can also be attracted to interest.
The disadvantage is that when people get curious, they take off their pants, and you end up pretending to be mysterious.
If the quality of the final product fails to achieve the expected results, it will immediately trigger a rebellious mentality.
For a product that could barely reach the passing mark, under this kind of marketing style, once the audience's expectations were raised, they were not satisfied in the end.
There is absolutely no way to escape the scolding and negative reviews.
This approach to advertising is also the result of multiple considerations by the publishing house.
The advertising budget is US$3.6 million.
It is not comparable to the marketing budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars for big-budget movies, and it is also far from the global preparations the group had for Ms. Rowling's last two Harry Potter books, "Half-Blood Prince" and "The Deathly Hallows" before they were published.
No matter how classic the IP "The Little Prince" is, it can only be regarded as a new favorite.
Accountants in the finance department are not idiots.
Each book is priced at 20 pounds. Even if the first batch of 300,000 copies is sold out this year, the estimated total revenue will only be 6 million pounds.
Not counting inflation in the next twenty years, a total sales volume of 30 million pounds will already be one of the top 10,000 success stories in the book market.
The original marketing budget of "The Little Prince" was only 400,000 US dollars. We asked Dean Hawke of Oxford University to hold more than a dozen readers' meetings and book signings in large physical bookstores in several major countries in the English-speaking area. Some $300,000 was barely enough.
Use the remaining $100,000 to appear on a few trendy book-promoting podcasts, hire book journalists to write two articles, and you’re done.
This $3.6 million advertising budget is not for the "Little Prince" project team, but for the entire publisher's Easter book season.
The board of directors can let the little prince take a ride. If the main boss boldly promotes a certain group sub-project, other parallel project groups will rebel.
Secondly, Osborne was also very confident in the quality of the book "The Little Prince", so after communicating with the advertising team, he decided on this publicity plan.
We won’t reveal what the featured books are.
I just leave it up to readers to guess, think, and discuss on online discussion groups.
People whose curiosity is aroused go to such lengths to find out for themselves.
Finally, when the book comes out, you can’t resist the urge to buy one and read it, right?
The 30-second spot on YouTube should have met Osborne's expectations.
It's just that with the help of the black girl starring in her true colors, the effect may be a little too good. Even a gentle and peaceful person like Sakai Katsuko felt itchy in her heart as if a cat was scratching her.
How was she going to find it?
Katsuko Sakai couldn't help but turn on her mobile phone, open Google Chrome, and enter related keywords such as "Scholastic Group, Easter Book Season".
A large number of recommended Lenovo items automatically popped up on the browser——
[What are the key titles for Scholastic’s Easter book season? 】
[May I ask, what is the new book that Scholastic Group will launch on March 25? 】
[In the Scholastic advertising video, what is the fairy tale book that the little girl laughs at? 】
…
Many questions about these keywords were specially captured by the Google Chrome backend because they were entered multiple times by different users.
The girl had just finished typing the English letters of the word Scholastic, and there were already a large number of related question entries below.
Katsuko Sakai was definitely not the only one who noticed the mysterious gimmick in the advertisement and was intrigued.
"No need to look it up, I know it's "The Little Prince"."
(End of chapter)
