Bertrams rolls out festive 'believe in books' campaign

Bertrams has unveiled its Christmas campaign, with the tagline "Believe in Books" as the wholesaler heads into the festive trading period. 

The brainchild of commercial director Garry Blackman, the campaign is part of the firm's plans to engage staff following a period of upheaval that saw private equity firm Aurelius buy the business in February 2018. 

Blackman, who was formerly head of books at Tesco, joined the business in May. 

"With my background, I'm very used to Christmas in July and it's a great way of engaging your business," said Blackman. "We've never had anything quite like this and it's been a good way of engaging customers and colleagues. In a company like this it's easy to forget that you work in the books industry but this campaign has really grabbed people's attention." 

Taking inspiration from the classic Christmas film "Miracle on 34th Street", Blackman, with the help of Katie Palmer at Wordery and head of marketing Emma Wakefield, devised "Believe in Books" and kicked off the campaign on the hottest day of the year with Father Christmas at the firm's Norwich headquarters before putting it out to the trade at its September conference. 

"We've broken a lot of Bertrams traditions, calling it the Christmas trading period rather than quarter four trading, calling it peak, to really get people engaged and we re-named the trade show our Christmas conference," said Blackman. 

Authors including Jeffrey Archer and Anton Du Beke helped kick off the festivities alongside a special recording from Elton John, with changes also made to the Bertrams Christmas catalogue, with pin badges, paper bags, and posters all rolling out the festive campaign. 

Blackman said: "The catalogue went out to bookshops and there have been subtle changes in the ways we have merchandised the titles. We've picked out our hero titles, as well as the usual standout bestsellers, and we've been helped by their being such a wide range this year. We've collaborated with publishers and the response has been really good and we're already planning to repeat the campaign next year. As a business we are hugely proud of it, it's really become part of the language around our business." 

The "Believe in" tagline will be rolled out with adapted campaigns for spring, summer and autumn 2020, before Bertrams rolls out a new festive campaign for winter 2020. 

For now, Blackman is focused on Christmas 2019. He said: "As ever in retail, everyone is saying it's a late Christmas and it's going to be interesting to see what happens with the election and the weather. People always celebrate Christmas and the release of books this Christmas was a really good range and it wasn't all mass-market celebrity books, there's some great fiction in there, some great cookery books and I think the range will be reflected when everyone comes back."