PRH's Obama UK media campaign kicks off this weekend

With Barack Obama's memoir out from Viking on Tuesday (17th November), PRH's UK media campaign will kick off this weekend.

On the heels of CNN's early coverage and an advance review in the New York Times, coming up in the UK is a "rare" co-serialisation between the Sunday Times and Times, as part of which the two newspapers will publish exclusive extracts from A Promised Land this Sunday (15th November) and Monday (16th November). This will be supported by marketing including radio advertising across Times Radio and Virgin, press advertising across both newspapers, social media advertising and promotion to their subscriber base via Times+.

As previously reported, the advertising campaign for the book includes prime-time TV advertising, as well as radio, podcast, programmatic digital and social media advertising, and a wide range of partnerships activity, supplemented by content on the Penguin website and Penguin and Viking social channels. 

Further details on the marketing roll-out for the book divulged include that the campaign includes TV advertising during C4’s "Gogglebox" on 20th November and ITV’s "I’m a Celebrity" on 25th November. Video-on-demand advertising will commence for two weeks from publication across Sky One, Sky Atlantic and Sky Go, and across a range of All4 boxsets including "The West Wing". 

Radio advertising for the book will run for two weeks from 30th November, across global stations including Heart and Capital. A sponsorship of the Capital Xtra Book Club will also run next week with on-air advertising slots and a branded segment on the network on Saturday 21st November.

A two-week podcast sponsorship and advertising package is also scheduled alongside a programmatic digital campaign with social media advertising that features vox pops, book trailers and interview footage with Obama.

Meanwhile PRH UK's staff sale of A Promised Land has raised almost £4,500 for the Advocacy Academy, a youth social justice movement mentoring the younger leaders of the future, to date.

Obama was also announced as a star speaker for the Booker Prize this week. He is due to talk about what reading Booker Prize novels has meant to him at the prize ceremony next Thursday, 19th November, broadcast in partnership with the BBC.

In the US, The Atlantic has published a print and audio extract from the preface of A Promised Land, ahead of an interview with Obama about his memoir it is running on Monday (16th November). Two high-profile TV interviews are also lined up to air over the weeked with Obama on CBS this Sunday (15th November), on "CBS Sunday Morning" with Gayle King and "CBS 60 Minutes" with Scott Pelley.

Oprah Winfrey will interview Obama in a special interview for Apple TV, to be broadcast on the book's publication date. She commented: "This book was worth the wait. Everybody who reads it is going to be on this journey from the grueling and monotonous grind of the campaign, to taking us inside the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room and the Situation Room and sometimes, even the bedroom. This book has both the intimacy and the grandeur coming through in this memoir, and I have so been looking forward to speaking with him about all of it."