PRH sweeps up at BMS Marketing awards

Penguin Random House’s “innovative” campaigns to promote The Fox and the Star and The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep have been honoured at the Book Marketing Society’s Best Marketing Awards for the Christmas season.

The winners for the festive season, which encompasses campaigns run between September and December 2015, were announced at the BMS meeting at Hachette’s Carmelite House offices tonight (17th February).

Ingrid Matts of Particular Books, an imprint of PRH, was honoured in the shoestring category, which celebrates campaigns costing less than £5,000, for her “innovative” campaign to promote the The Fox and the Star by Penguin designer Coralie Bickford-Smith. Highly commended were Fleur Clarke and Naomi Berwin of Hodder & Stoughton for their campaign the originally self-published title, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

The “surprise” winner for the children’s category was the campaign by Vicky Photiou at Ladybird, another PRH imprint, for The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep by Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin and Irina Maununen for a “pure marketing”, according to the judges. Highly commended were Nicola Way, Hannah Bourne and Catherine Conroy of HarperCollins Children’s for their “unmissable campaign” for Grandpa’s Great Escape by David Walliams, as well as one for Natasha Collie, Gemma Rostill and Roisin O’Shea of Penguin for their campaign – including the first ever Snapchat book signing – for Zoe Sugg’s second outing, Girl Online: On Tour.

The winning campaign in the adult category came from Celeste Ward-Best at Cornerstone, with the WH Smith Richard & Judy Book Club choice The Tea-Planters Wife by Dinah Jefferies. Using geo-targeted advertising to drive sales, this became a “stand-out bestseller in the crowded Christmas period”, the judges said. There were also two highly commended campaigns in the adult category, with Bethan Ferguson, Jeska Lyons and Ella Pocock of Quercus impressing the judges with their “eye-catching” campaign (#showusyourstack) for the “surprise” Christmas bestseller Norwegian Wood, and Clarissa Pabi of Ebury for another YouTube “phenomenon”, The Amazing Book is Not on Fire by Dan Howell and Phil Lester.