It’s already got more than 730,000 views, 2,530 five-star rating and comments saying things like, “AWESOOOOOOOOOOME!!!” So, why do I think this book trailer sucks?
Here, watch it, first, then I’ll tell you why…
Mesmerizing, right? Gorgeous! Stunning. But, does it sell?
Did it lead people in the major markets that viewed and loved the video to buy the book? Or, any book, for that matter? YouTube stats show much of the views coming from the U.S., Canada, U.K., New Zealand, Australia and Russia.
And, here’s the amazon rank for the featured book as of last night:
- In the U.S. – 1,830,805
- In the U.K. – 101.435
- In Canada – 758,362
No amazon for New Zealand or Australia, so I couldn’t check. But, the far greater percentage of traffic to the trailer on YouTube is coming from outside New Zealand with a heavy emphasis on the U.S.
So, did exposure to the video drive awareness? Yup. But, sales? Nope!
The video is snazzy as hell, but it don’t sell!
This is a classic example of art getting in the way of the message. Of a call to action. Of reading…OF SALES.
Everyone’s so wrapped up in the glory that is the video, they never get to the fundamental purpose…to get people to buy and read more books, starting with the epic novel featured in the trailer.
Because, hell, if they won’t buy THAT one, what WILL they buy?!
You know who really wins here? BBDO. They made a stunning work of art that went viral and left everyone talking about how cool THE VIDEO is. Not the book…THE VIDEO. Yay BBDO, you guys rock. I can almost taste the CLIO.
But, what about making people want to buy and read more books. Starting with the one featured in the video?
Breath in, breath out. Okay, I’m done.
Rail away in the comments…
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Results-focused marketers and artsy creatives have been duking out this conflict for decades.
In The End of Marketing as We Know It author Sergio Zyman–former marketing czar for Coca Cola–describes an incredibly popular Coke commercial starring Mean Joe Green. “People talk about it for weeks.” writes Zyman, “The critics rave about it. The bottlers are elated…The company should run it forever, right?.”
“Wrong.”
To universal uproar, Zyman pulled the ad because it failed to lift sales. “You see,” writes Zyman,” I have this screwed-up notion that marketing and advertising are suppose to sell stuff.”
Amen.
“This is a classic example of art getting in the way of the message. ”
Couldn’t agree more. Absolutely stunning, but the message was lost.
I’d imagine it’s because the video didn’t appeal to the right demographic: people who would actually buy the book. Could be way off though.
Also, I wonder if the viralness might not have instantly brought book sales, but still might gather attention to bigger mediums (like talk shows) that will definitely bring more book sales.
Great post, champ.
Beautiful.
But…
But where’s the call to action? Did I miss it? The authors website? I must have missed it.
Ian
This doesn’t come off as a book trailer to me at all, rather an ad from the book council urging people to read. Would have been more effective in that roll to have the camera pull away at the end to thousands of books all open and showing cut-ups of their stories, and a catch phrase – “C’mon in, We’re waiting for you”, or “Tell you a story”. I agree, too much art, not enough message.
Strange video I thought…too long and drawn out.
Cool? Definitely, but I buy the type of books I buy, and that commercial didn’t convince me to change my mind.
I’m working with students on a “viral” video experiment and would love your take on it when it’s completed.
Your points are righ on with whether videos sell.
Happy to look. But, my take doesn’t really matter a whole lot. It’s about how the market responds.
Buzz is fun. Viral is cool. But, what’s the end game beyond attention? How to do you convert that attention to income?
right on that is
Oh, don’t get me started!… I used to work in the delusional world of “Advertising” and had to deal with snake-oil salesmen every day. I have pieces of statuesque plastic as testament to my design prowess… but… I melted it all down and never looked back. I’m now in a better place because of people like Jonathan!
If I had words of advice to anyone looking to have an Advertising Agency try to tell you that they can develop an online marketing campaign, it’s this:
1) What is your success rate with other, similar campaigns. Call the other authors to confirm the numbers!
2) If they won’t work from a “results equal payment” agreement… Unless you’ve got money to burn, just walk away from the table!
To attempt to make this an argument about “art VS. sales” is more than a little simplistic, as if doing some “less arty” piece will unquestionably move the sales meter on the book. Which is, of course, equally untrue. After all, if it were true ALL ads would be words on screen, or spokesperson addressing camera, or a static shot of the product with the words “buy this” underneath.
While I totally agree that the breathtaking presentation of this video rolls roughshod over the sales message, I can’t fault anyone for trying to entertain their audience. After all, if you don’t get their attention in the first few seconds on-line, they’re gone.
Entertainment– holding the audience– is an art form. And like all art, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It would be a mistake to rant against this video for trying to be amazing and entertaining art, and better to spend thoughtful time considering: “If I were remaking this, how would I make it sell the book better?”
And when you go to do YOUR book trailer, how do you do both– entertain and sell? Without both, you’ve got nothing.
Completely agree with your point about entertainment. And, my rant was not about trying to make it entertaining in any way. If you can entertain and inform while also inspiring intrigue and the desire learn more or buy, the message, whether it’s audio, video or print work much better. My point is about what the video DIDN’T do, not what it DID do.
In the end, entertainment alone is about ego, not business…unless you’re charging people for the entertainment itself.
Your rant implied that this was an affront to all authors because it came out entertaining and (maybe) won’t sell books.
I’m saying that being too upset about what you see as “ego” isn’t productive for authors.
The art of finding the entertainment/messaging balance is more difficult than you give credit for. It is possible to intend to create a video that both pulls viewers in AND deliver a sales message that’s effective, and fail. Many do, and it’s not (always) because of their egos or some malicious intent to win awards.
Without a great sales message, you’ll fail to sell books even though a lot of people watch your video. Without entertaining your audience, you’ll fail to sell books because nobody watched the video.
To be overly offended by any one failure to find the perfect balance is to pretend that doing the perfect video is easy, which it isn’t. Since this is a blog about how authors can sell more books, I’d like to suggest that raging against this failure isn’t all that productive.
Authors will get better results from the video producers they’re working with if they join in the process in a real spirit of openness, acknowledging the need for both intrigue and sales, rather than defensively assume going in that entertaining the audience is a trap, and that they’re the only ones who want to sell books.
Point taken. However, I don’t believe the video achieved the desired objective–namely, to generate interest in books and sell them. The video, while beautiful, fails on several counts:
1) Branding: I’m all for entertaining an audience, but promotiing the product IS the point of an advertisement. Who/what is being promoted in this video? I couldn’t tell. I can make some educated guesses but (speaking as a consumer) that’s more work than I’m willing to put into an ad. As a branding tool, this video failed– I could easily see this same footage being used (with very little editing) to promote “The New Zeeland Paper Council”.
2) Both visuals and dialogue should support your desired message, whether the message is raising brand awareness or promoting some “good thing” about a company. The animation did a great job of capturing attention but did little to promote the message, which I’m guessing was “books excite the imagination”. The voice-over (a dramatic reading) was a neat idea, but there was no message attached. In fact, by going for drama in both visuals and audio, by not leaving space for audio and video to each have a turn at lead the ad became “cluttered”. The visuals were more compelling to me, so I (and a lot of people) tuned the audio out.
As a book promotion tool, this ad fails–the message wasn’t delivered. As a video, this piece also fails–there’s too much going on. In the end, the successful message (and the reason I think this video went viral) was, “paper cutouts are cool”.
It’s narrative that hooks readers, and the mounting sound effects, echo effects, and the like left the narration incomprehensible. I suspect that more clear narration and a lot less effects could have made this a more effective promotional vehicle. The sound editors shot the narrative in the foot.
Have to agree, for such an exquisite piece of film, the sounds is a real detraction. But, still, I don’t think better sound would’ve accomplished the essential purpose. Will never know, though.
Wow. I am with you. The art that was the video was impressive, but I couldn’t figure out what the book was even about. I kept thinking about the hours involved in cutting those tiny paper thingies and making them pop up, wondering how they did that. The guy narrating was distracting, in fact.
I think it doesn’t work because the narrator is very clearly reading from the book, and the writing is awful. All this video does is verify that I would not enjoy the book.
What do you think of the 37signals videos they released around their book? Both the trailers and Karl Rove one.
I featured those videos in an earlier post (except the Carl Rove one, that came later).
I think they’re a lot more effective, not because they’re cooler or slicker and higher production value. But, because they leave you wanting to know more about the book. Especially when taken as a group. And, they give you a good sense of the flavor and message. Also, the Carl Rove is a massive pattern interrupt, it disarms you, before feeding the sales message. That’s something the best video marketers do all the time.
In the end, they meet the essential purpose of book trailers. They didn’t just get people talking about the trailer, they got them talking about and interested in the book. And, who knows how much they played into this, but the fact that the book Rework hit the NYT and WSJ lists out of the gates is pretty interesting, too.
I wrote this in response to a citation of this post on another website, where a writer bought into the sloppy conclusions of this article. I’ll repost it here:
Idisagree completely with this rant.
There are some intangibles involved, but also some boneheaded thinking.
For one thing, it was created by a national book council. Probably didn’t cost the author anything. It’s an ad for the fact that New Zealand has a book industry, as much as anything else. Were you previously aware of that? I wasn’t.
So it can’t really be judged by flat out sales figures (not that his use of those figures isn’t a crock, but I’ll get to that.)
I’ve seen this trailer before, really beautiful. The address was emailed to me. This is one of the few videos that actually qualitfies for the bandied-about “viral” term. People pass it around and it shows up with those zillions of views. All those people saw the name and author. It brought prestigious awards and attention to the NZ book industry. The video succeeded at a wildly elevated level. But that’s supposedly a bad thing, according to this grumpster.
But back to those figures (and maybe somebody else knows what an amazon ranking means in terms of sales?) Gee, “looks bad”. But a little thought shows other ways to interpret it.
He scoffs that most of the views were outside of New Zealand. (Well, kind of the point in promoting your national book industry, no?) but what that means is people outside the NZ market area were exposed to the book and bought it to whatever degree the amazon rankings indicate. Who outside of NZ would have bought the book otherwise?
Then he says there is no amazon in NZ. Oh… so he has no idea how many people bought the book in NZ? Maybe it’s sold out three printings in stores there because its so famous and is now associated with a booster image of the country. If somebody told me it had become the best-selling book in the history of NZ publishing I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
In fact, it’s been highly awarded there and ranks among the top books in the country. (which I found out in like 20 seconds on Google) Of course, that’s NZ, so 10,000 books is a LOT of sales. Of course that also means a small number of sales, like 10,000 copies internationally would mean a doubling of sales–that could only be explained by the presence and awesomeness of the video.
(I also see that book ranked 78,833 on amazon.uk, by the way, not the 101.000 this turkey attributes. Which could very well be an effect of the viral spread of the video. And the difference in sales numbers between those two rankings ALONE might be a really significant boost in income for the publisher and author.)
So. Gee. Was it worth making this beautiful thing and having a million people enjoy it?
I’d kind of have to think so.
Hey, this is the turkey, lol. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
Happy to show you the screenshot for last night’s amazon number and go point by point, but we really don’t have to go there.
Simple question is, did it make people want to buy and read more books, especially this one.
My opinion. No. And, it seems the other commenters agree.
I like the idea of literally experiencing the book’s journey (altho this journey may have been picturesque it didn’t carry any particular meaning for me).
I’m in RW Ridley’s camp on the writing. Plus, I could hardly make out what the author was even saying. Too much bass, too rushed.
Lesson learned. Reading from books in a trailer, even if the visuals are great, still needs to be meaningful, and comprehensible.
You highlighted a problem, you told me what NOT to do… Now you leave me hanging of what TO DO … ? please tell me.
Start with really good copy that leads to some call to action (learn more, join a list or buy the book). Grab attention, entertain, inform, engage, identify questions/pains that the book answers/resolves, create or uncover latent urgency, call to action. There are a ton of ways to do this right, no single formula.
And, you can have a ton of fun and entertain, too. In fact, you MUST!
But, if you want to make a great trailer, start with learning how to write great direct-response copy, then study the structure of storytelling and bring them together in a visual way that leads people feeling compelled to act.
Even more, reverse-engineer great movie trailers that make you desperate to see the flick. It’s the same craft and purpose. Take your lead from those doing it right.
Great visual artistry = 10+. Kudos for that uber cool, animated book diorama thing going on. -10 for the selling opportunity. -10 for the horrible audio. The dramatic sound effects obscured the words/story. Not the best way to make someone want to buy/read the book–even if they knew where to get it. #marketingfail.
Good question. All text yawner that nobody watches, but they’re really clear on what you would have had to say if they bothered to watch the vid and get the name of your book?
Been done. Lots.
The one assumption that cannot possible be clear from the video is whether or not the intent was in fact to sell the book… “Going West”. To suggest otherwise is purely an assumption or maybe even doing nothing more than to echo a bias, a bias to the content that doesn’t necessarily have relevance in this case.
First and foremost I’m here…so, like the video the blog post got my attention…did it make a sale? …no!
So, do I judge the post the on the same terms as the video was judged? If I did it would be clear to me that many potential points were either missed, overlooked or maybe even ignored. Afterall look at the title…absolutely no hype to the post title right…wink!
Yes, the sound and the effects did get in the way of the narrative.
Yes, it did seem to drag on.
Yes, there didn’t really appear to be a call to action, so what?
As mentioned earlier, a bit simplistic to focus on.
Criticize the animator and the producer for their work, no, the video went viral with over 700,000 views and over 2,500 people took the time to rate it as well. I got attention, the New Zealand Book Council currently has 294 channel subscribers.
The NZBC wins, they took ACTION! Challenge it, question it, fine, what you can’t fault them for is the fact that they took action.
If this was purely a sales video, it would be easy to say it was an EPIC failure. I simply don’t feel that you can judge it on the level.
There is something to be said for branding and creating awareness and building a reputation.
Is this video just one of many to come?
Will there be more target book videos to come?
So, rather that berate the video and it’s creators or scold the NZBC for their failure, which I think is a crock…let’s talk about what they could have changed that might have left someone panting to read the book, which I don’t feel was their goal.
From a sales perspective…
1. The sound definitely got in the way of the narrative.
2. Arguably the narrative was to long.
3. There simply wasn’t a call to action, a next step to take, it just ended.
4. The title seemed to miss key related keywords.
5. While it opened with great emotional appeal it really wasn’t that there was a target audience.
I’m sure there is more that can be said, this seems like a great place to start.
Bottom-line we are here on a blog that has no direct relationship to the NZBC and we are creating and growing awareness of their work.
If never does work when you try to compare apples with oranges, all you see are the differences, never mind that they both can be equally popular.
The intent, according to what I could gather from online info, was to inspire people of NZ to get and read more books. And, the lead or “hook” was this one book. That’s why I said in the post there was a dual intent.
Nobody’s debating whether the video was striking, entertaining or engaging. Nobody’s debating whether it was cool that NZBC had the jones to act. Yes to both. We all agree.
The question is much simpler than that – was the ultimate purpose achieved? Did it move people to act? Would this trailer would make you want to read THIS book or ANY book. Can you seriously answer yes to that? I can’t. And, I don’t believe many others, New Zealanders or elsewhere, could either.
So, beautiful as it was, it failed at it’s essential purpose.
Action alone is NOT enough. Getting attention alone is not enough. Growing awareness is meaningless…if it doesn’t at some point cycle back to inciting a desired action by the viewer. That’s where the disconnect lies.
P.S. – Thanks for adding your thoughts on sales oriented changes, much appreciated.
Visually stunning, although the audio verged on painfully bad. As a marketing vehicle = fail. What a waste, because the video was brilliant but incomplete.
I sometimes do website audits where I evaluate a website in detail from a technical and marketing perspective. I see people doing so many things right, and yet wrecking their efforts by utterly blowing it on a couple of factors. Their tagline. No meta Title, or a bad one. Ghastly page load times. Poor site navigation. I could rant on and on.
The fundamental problem seems to be the creators of these marketing pieces getting so self-involved that they forget they’re creating for an audience. Or, in a few cases, they just don’t have the self-esteem to be willing to admit they’re offering something.
This failure to see through the prospective buyer’s eyes isn’t limited to book trailers, or websites. I’d go so far as to say most marketing is fundamentally flawed, most of the time. Next time you go to a trade show, count the number of booths where, at a glance, you can’t tell what the company wants to do for you. It will be more than half. This isn’t ad-hoc marketing – these organizations have spent months preparing and thousands of dollars, and the majority fail at the most basic communication with a prospective client.
Just as this trailer did.
My guess it they know how to get it. Go down to any bookstore in New Zealand and it’s probably in the window. If not, ask.
I can’t beleive anybody would say something this nice, and this SUCCESSFUL sucks. Well, okay, I can.
Here’s a perfect example of the point I made. The following link is to a book trailer…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxnOKDZNA9s
A book that was mentioned on this page in the tribal shout outs…
# Rework hits NY Times & WSJ lists – Congrats to Jason Fried And David Heinemeier Hansson on making their great new book, Rework, a NY Times Bestseller
I stopped watching the video at exactly 1:03 minutes and had I not been reading and interested in this blog post I wouldn’t have watched the above book trailer past the first 20 seconds.
Why is that?
Despite the amazingly provocative cover of the book ReWork the video book trailer was anything but…
Ok, I made myself sit through the ad for Rework so I could comment. The video comes across as a joke–I just can’t take it seriously. From the youtube comments, it looks like most people took it as a spoof ad. If the ad conveys the feel of the book, than I feel it accomplished it’s goal of a) raising awareness b) conveying a sense of the content and c) entertaining the audience. What it did not do (for me) was generate much interest in finding out more about the book.
Great post and insightful dialogue. Book Video Trailers can be a productive addition to a book’s marketing campaign if done right (and can be for a fraction of the cost).
Going West was published in 1994! Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (10 Jan 1994).
You can buy it on Amazon marketplace for 49p!
I don’t think we can judge the success or failure of entire advertising method based on one example.
One you should be looking at is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X58RPS665V0 (warning: violence). It’s for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and it’s been wildly successful compared to the example in this post.
Here’s a quick excerpt from USA Today:
Probably because of the success of the trailer, Tim Burton is going do create a screenplay of it: http://www.hbg-international.com/?p=4737
If we used this as the only example, we’d have to conclude this method is a smash hit.
It’s worth noting that this comes on the back of previous books in the same vein (pun fully intended)
which were popular without book trailers. One thing about advertising will always be true: great advertising can’t sell a crappy product. People love these books, so using the book trailer to give it that extra push is a smart move.
I’m not disagreeing with Jonathan at all, because he’s absolutely right about the example he chose. It’s a big lesson in what not to do. It’s just not the only example.
How can Jonathan possibly be right?
Jonathan I just don’t see anyway the following thought “action alone is NOT enough. Getting attention alone is not enough. Growing awareness is meaningless” is even meaningful.
Action alone is not enough…what does that even mean? …you can’t have any kind of measurable outcome without action. As you know it is the market that determines what is worthy of their attention, we as the creators don’t get to decide for them.
Attention alone is not enough…again, I don’t get it…without attention YOU don’t even exist. This isn’t woo woo stuff, it’s a fact.
And without question awareness IS meaningful.
Not every interaction with your potential market will translate directly to sales, yet, it does translate directly to the possibility of a RELATIONSHIP. If make content and relevance equal…relationships will beat out a hard core make the sale bid and with far less effort.
Do you really need evidence of how awareness alone was EVERYTHING when it came to the turning point of someone life’s work?
I’m with you, question the results, question the outcome and take away what you can. My second comment pointed what is without question a “book trailer” and without question “it failed”.
My guess is that NZBC achieved far more with their video than ReWork video. Which is tragic given the quality and delivery of the message on the cover of ReWork.
Yes, the NZBC video could have done more, still…was it meant to? …what it effective yes. Does the video promote the book well…absolutely not…it does however make the presence of NZBC known.
Can a follow-up video designed specially promote the book be launched yes.
The NZBC video was far from being a failure.
James – I appreciate your point of view. I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree here. This is a debate that’s actually much big than the book trailer world and has been raging in the ad world for decades. You can imagine my feelings on the value of spending money on branding for most businesses, too. lol.
But, again, I thank you for the energy you’ve brought to this conversation.
No doubt Jonathan…
Although it might be fun to create a couple small scale test case scenarios, don’t you think. Scenarios with real targets. And yes, I’m confident you won’t be rushing out to spend a ton of money, if any, on a branding campaign.
A big thank you to you, I do enjoy your edge Mr. Renegade…
Makes me wonder how people would rank my bookTrailer…hmmmm
The point that Jonathan is absolutely spot on with is we don’t get to decide rank…your audience does.
I don’t feel like you have to be married to one video, experiment, just as you would with copy and equally true be very clear about your goal…then write your movie to meet your goal.
Which part of “Going West by Maurice Gee was published in 1994″ do you not understand?
Michael noted above that the trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has been widely successful and that it is “probably because of the success of the trailer” that Tim Burton will be doing a screen version.
I’m not following how we make the jump from the release of a trailer to the book being successful as a result of that trailer, nor from there to the film production. After all, Grahame-Smith’s success with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies must certainly account for a good deal of the sales for his new book – people want to read books by authors they’ve enjoyed in the past. Historical/literary mashups with genre subjects like vampires and zombies are very hot right now – that lone could account for Burton’s involvement. Is it noted somewhere that it was the trailer that significantly influenced these two events?
For me, as an author, book trailers are problematic because there doesn’t seem to be a direct way to track whether it was the trailer or some other aspect of the promotional campaign that prompted the sale.
I’ve been watching book trailers for several months now. I buy and read 6-8 books per week. And I don’t think I’ve ever gone out and purchased a book based on what I saw in a trailer.
Woah!
A book read with this voice clearly makes it look even more boring to those who think reading si boring (my boyfriend is a good example). People don’t read for the sake of reading. They read for the stories and the characters and in this video, we hear only descriptions and long, complex, deep sentences. Sounds like it’s a concept by authors who like to listen to their own writings. It’s such an oldschool way to sell books. Maybe it touches the die-hard fans of litterature, but it sure doesn’t make reading accessible.
It’s definitely something that happens among artists. Being creative for the sake of being creative. The more weird / complex / deep / abstract it gets, the best. If you want to write for your clique, great, but if you’re dreaming of making a living out of your art and touch as much people as possible, sorry my friend, but you got a business. And no, it doesn’t make you a “whore” to admit it.
Want it or not, it’s a business. Your book / song / drawing is a product.
Better know what your potential buyers like / want / prefer. And ask yourself HOW to make them find out about you. Yup that’s marketing. UGLY marketing.
You better change your mind about it as well, because those who make it use it.
The concept of this trailer is great, I mean all the effects.
But the message is nowhere. I agree with you Jonathan.
I can’t even understand the goal and objectives behind it : Sell more? Make people read more? Or just justifying their existance and their paychecks?
It’s a video made by authors and die-hard litterature fans for themselves.
And I’m very sorry to say, it’s wasted money.
Looking at other use cases for book trailer videos that have worked, doesn’t this just fall in under everything else. There’s bad execution and good execution. There’s bad website strategy that has bad results and good website strategy that has good results. Same for social media or whatever else.
So it’s not so much that you’re not drinking the book trailer kool-aid. You just think bad strategy is a waste in video and everything else. Right?
Obviously the “Kool Aid” rhetoric is overheated, irrelevant; silly, and even kind of quaint. But as for the arguments against this video?
So achieving worldwide notice and sales for an obscure NZ book and the book counsel is somehow a failure? You have something get a million views and win awards and being discussed on boards like this one…and that’s not a good thing?
Gee, can somebody show a video that IS a good thing?
Keep in mind that nothing in the discussion sheds any light on the effects of sales in New Zealand. Which I think we can assume were pretty positive.
And the fact that there are ANY sales worldwide can only be laid to the video’s effect. But that’s apparently some sort of failure or cult effect.
In watching the video again, I think it’s obvious that this wasn’t created to sell the book. This was an attempt to “brand” the New Zealand Book Council, and they’re “Where Books Come To Life” campaign. This is a cool/distinguished mash-up. Cool video – distinguished New Zealand author. (Maurice Gee has several published novels, and he’s an award winning author) In that particular case, it works.
Excellent post R. W. — but they are not listening. The Kool-Aiders never do.
I’d say anybody interested in the “Koolaid Anonymous” aspects of this article/thread should examine the history of posts.
Everybody was jumping on the whole “oh, it’s awful, doesn’t sell the book” bandwagon until I posted some second views on sales (instead of the rigged up assumptions in the original article, and started pointing out how many ways the thing seems to be working. Then the comments swung the other way.
KA meeting schedule available online.
I found the audio poor, and the visuals — all those paper cut-outs — quite distracting. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with books, book councils, reading, libraries, bookstores — anything that, to me, signifies actually reading, where the visual is ALL IN ONE’S HEAD!
Must be that I’m too old (over 40) — I think the concept of book trailers are oxymoronic. It’s an artsy-fartsy “movie”. What does it have to do with the experience of / process of reading?
I read at least a book a week — if someone I trust tells me that a book is good, or if I see a video of the author reading from their book or talking about their book, that might drive me to read it.
Some popular book video that tells me nothing about the book? Naaah.
Why watch a video of a guy reading from his book instead of just reading a sample chapter? That doesn’t make any sense.
I agree – cool video; as an avid book reader it didn’t cause me to do anything. I like to be ‘hooked’ in and moved emotionally to want to find out more and want to DO something. This video just left me perplexed with questions … what is this about? how did they do this – i.e. cut up all of these images? what are they talking about? etc. So to me, overall, it was useless and not even something I’d forward to anyone. But maybe I’m too simplistic and don’t see the ‘artsy’ message…frankly, I couldn’t wait till the video ended and was expecting “something” but there wasn’t anything — but then again, I’m not a fan of modern art…so it must be me since it’s a viral video there must be something I’m missing! Maybe that’s the intention – to leave you perplexed! It did that for sure.
Hi all,
There are so many valuable opinions in this thread – great to see such active debate on the subject. Four things stand out for me based on the above:
1. The original article/post approached the critique from the specific angle of sales of Going West, which is unfortunate, as I don’t think that is what the advertisement actually set out to achieve. The NZ Book Council encourages NZ people to read books, and also to promote the cultural value of NZ writers. Considering the average budget of an arts council, the target market and advertising spend would have been focused on NZ people (when was the last time a Book Council had a world wide advertising budget?) Hence I don’t think international sales performance really gets to the heart of the matter.
2. That said, as Jonathan (and most others) thought it was an ad to sell a book, the intended message didn’t seem to come through anyway. That to me was very strange.
3. However, PR (both social media and traditional) has to be a measure here. I’m thinking of all the thousands of book trailers we’re not talking about right now. There are over 15,000 google results for “going west nz book council”, thousands of tweets on twitter, and Google Insights reports significant increases in worldwide search volume for both “maurice gee” and “nz book council” around the release of the trailer. Many of these searches I would presume would result in the campaign objective “ie an interest in NZ books/writers” being met – as the subject is talked about alongside the video. Certainly has raised at least the awareness of Maurice Gee as a writer. I know I found out it was intended to lift awareness of NZ writers by reading the detail in a blog post – the call to action was there, just not as direct as you would normally expect. Previous to seeing the video and reading the blog post, I thought Maurice Gee was an Australian writer (most Australians tend to think NZ overachievers are actually Australians), so hey the ambiguous call to action (or message) worked on me.
4. I think an interesting question is whether NZ Book Council ever actually designed this as an online viral campaign. The video was placed online in their name, but the details below the youtube video suggest the upload was by an agency as the details below it are really just industry details (ie which agency made it). There are no prompts to visit the NZ council website, no call to action included at the end of the video, no new videos or discussion has been instigated on the channel by NZ council since the initial upload around the topic, their twitter page only has 196 tweets and 276 followers (suggesting it was only created a few months ago). They are not exactly primed for an innovative online campaign such as what we are talking about.
So you either lambast NZ Council for the failings of their online campaign, or entertain the possibility that there is no online campaign (i would say this played heavily on NZ television) – hence all of this publicity is a bonus.
Regardless of which way you want to take it, the next time NZ Book Council produce something awesome online (whether intentional or not), it would be a good idea to support it with a sound social media strategy and the very basic marketing aspects (ie a call to action and some kind of follow up). This is a great video, and at the very least all it really needed was a URL.
You’re absolutely right. By the end of the trailer I could not remember the name of the book or the author. It was a beauty though!