Advertising Books

This is me responding to an article I was just reading on The Huffington Post. Where was the Superbowl Ad for Books?
Superbowl somehow manages to be an international event despite much of the world not knowing or caring a lick about American football. With it comes a seeming endless supply of loosely related articles, blogentries and videos… and I’m pretty sure that is simply to ride the wave of the superbowl search spree. I don’t need http://www.alexa.com/ to tell me that everybody is searching ‘superbowl’ using google.
However the article I’m talking about here is perhaps more related to the superbowl than many. The focus, though, being on what wasn’t there rather than what was. No superbowl ads for the latest novels apparently (not being american I am one of the millions who will watch a couple off the ads off youtube but won’t ever watch the actual game – though it is aired in Australia – I’m sure my mum will watch it).
That seems pretty obvious though. Who wants to watch ads about books? That’s pretty much like watching ads about watching grass grow or something. Compared to much of technology these days books don’t do much of anything. Apparently they tell stories – which could be pretty cool – but anybody whose anybody knows the good ones come to dvd anyway eventually. The poor old publishing industry is increasing being told by the world they are no longer needed – that technology has made them obsolete.
Let me just say for me there is nothing like a book… Yes I am one of those people who smells books and loves it – well except for some old ones which unfortunately smell faintly of puke. More than that screens give me a headache and being that I work in an office and do all of my uni assignments on the computer and watch more TV than I should my eyes really need the downtime they get when I sit down with real paper and ink. No such thing as square eyes my foot, the red left eye I develop towards the end of every work week isn’t caused by intentionally poking myself repeatedly.
I’m getting off-track. How to advertise books. She suggests in the article ads that have the high profile acts of the other ads carting books around or reading a book. Basically doing things which are still selling the books as an unknown, undescribed entity. In essense? We are attempting to sell bricks.
Rather than trying to sell books as books you should be trying to sell the story. In today’s word the main way to sell a good story is through film. That doesn’t mean holding the book to the camera though. It means showing through film the contents of the book. No, not the contents page either. What I am suggesting is a book targeted trailer.
Why are the only books that get trailers the ones that turn into movies – and therefore have lost all their good booky goodness. ‘As seen on TV’ is a fantastic selling point, well it seems to be a selling point for just about anything. So why not books?
Understandably books don’t get quite the same budget as a movie and filming aspects of the books would have to be done intentionally for advertising of that book. So perhaps instead a publisher could advertise their current best sellers or new releases all together. I’m not sure about the specifics but I certainly could envision a couple of ads which would encourage me to check it out.
Not as a screamer ad (you know the ones – loud annoying voice screaming at you while flashing through the sales goods – very cheap advertising). In my head I see an ad like the in cinema cinema ad which flicks through clips from a tone of movies while playing really high emotional music. But perhaps simply one of those ads where the characters seem to be discussing the product entirely in too much depth before mentioning what it is they are talking about. Mmm… Perhaps, though those have to be done well – though admittedly the level of acting required is far less as well.
I’m sure people with far more advertising experience than me (2 seasons of Gruen Transfer probably doesn’t make me an advertising profession) could come up with some better ads than I. In fact advertising books would make a great Gruen Transfer ad challenge – but that is a little on the irrelevant side. //Something that the word irrelevant made me think of. Fun fact – moot actually means to bring up for discussion. However in US law it meant something which wasn’t defined within law… therefore it would be irrelevant – thus moot got a meaning almost opposite its original.//
I say all this from the perspective that as a reader I would be interested in books shown to me as movie trailers. The best part is they don’t even have to be good for your audience to want to see them. Think of it as a video blurb… With the tending towards e-books (which I don’t like – give me paper anyday) maybe video blurbs could become a thing. Then advertising costs wouldn’t be as big of an issue because you were going to do it anyway.
I don’t know how many chick flicks I’ve watched only to be disappointed. I am very rarely as completely disappointed by a book. I think if you advertise on the same level – still keeping in mind you aren’t necessarily looking for the same audience as movies – books would be a hit. Maybe even the next big thing, after all even corsets made a comeback (even if they do wear them as outerwear rather than underwear nowaday).