Hermes Gowar and Aujla marketing campaigns win plaudits

Campaigns for Imogen Hermes Gowar's The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Vintage) and Rupy Aujla's The Doctor's Kitchen (HarperCollins) have been ranked among the best marketing campaigns of spring 2018.

At the Book Marketing Society’s meeting held at the Faber & Faber offices on Wednesday evening (13th June), Chloe Healy from Vintage was named the outright winner of the Adult Fiction category for her "all-encompassing and impressively detailed" campaign for Hermes Gowar's Women's Prize for Fiction-shortlisted debut that resulted in "impressive sales across all formats".

Highly commended were Cait Davies and Sarah Benton from Orion for making a splash with The Lido, a campaign that nominated "lifeguard" influencers to champion the book and bolster "regional appeal", and Sarah Shea and Emma Pickard at HarperFiction for their work on Fern’s Britton’s Coming Home (HarperCollins), 

The Guerrilla category (for spends of £2,500 or less) was won by Natalia Cacciatore at Cornerstone for her "diligent and focussed" campaign for The Girl on the Dancing Horse by Charlotte DuJardin, particularly for creatively accessing and then leveraging partnership marketing. Emma Petfield from John Murray Press was highly commended for her campaign for How to Survive the End of the World (when it’s in your own head) by Aaron Gillies.

The judges said they had a hard time picking the winners in the Non-Fiction category, especially. The winner however was Orlando Mowbray from HarperCollins for the campaign for The Doctor’s Kitchen by Dr Rupy Aujla. "This campaign took an unknown author and through clever positioning and messaging took him to the top of the iTunes podcast chart and increased his social media following by over 350% as well as achieving high sales in the tricky healthy eating market," the judges said. Highly commended was Jess Htay, Jen Callahan-Packer and Joanna Rose's "thorough, energetic and creative" campaign for BOSH! by Henry Firth and Ian Theasby (HQ). 

The multi-title category was also "closely-fought", but Vintage's Rosanna Boscawen came out on top for her campaign for its Vintage Minis, branded "a stylish execution of retail activation and brand partnerships". 4th Estate's WOM4N campaign from Liv Marsden was awarded highly commended. 

Kat McKenna from Pan Macmillan took the Children's category for an "impressive return on investment" for her campaign for Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, while Sonia Razvi from Penguin Random House Children's was applauded for her "solid and well thought-out" campaign for A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens, scooping the title of highly commended.