The publishing industry may be caught in the widening gap between traditional and digital media, but HarperCollins Canada’s latest campaign is all about good old fashioned ink on paper… even though much of the campaign is found on Facebook.
The company is celebrating reaching its 100,000th Facebook fan and has launched a new Facebook app to mark the occasion. The app, developed by 84 North Studios and called Share Reading, will host a contest in which Facebook fans vote for one lucky person to win 100 books. The winner will also choose a charity to donate an additional 100 books to.
The titles on the “Essential HarperCollins Reads” list were carefully selected by HarperCollins Canada staff, with input from those on their fan page.
“Most of the people on that page are book lovers,” said Cory Beatty, marketing director of HarperCollins Canada, when asked about the campaign’s push for print, rather than digital. He said his policy “has never been to explicitly promote one format over the other, but to market the author and the title.”
The HarperCollins Canada Facebook page was created in 2010, and has steadily built an engaged and highly interactive community of literature-loving fans. Beatty said that the publishing industry is one that typically operates by rote and tradition, so this abundance of connected fans is a tall accomplishment.
“For us to have developed this community on Facebook is something we’re quite proud of,” he said. “Our six nearest competitors combined have a third of the fans we have.” Beatty added in a statement that in terms of Facebook fans, HarperCollins Canada is now “up there with Via Rail, The Bay, The Globe and Mail and Bell Canada,” and that “it’s remarkable for a book publisher to be speaking to the same size crowd as Canada’s most iconic brands.”
Last week, representatives from HarperCollins Canada kicked off the Share Reading campaign by handing out 100 free books to pedestrians at the busy Toronto intersection of Yonge and Bloor.
Beatty said that the “book-minded” Facebook page generates discussions about books, authors and upcoming readings, and is useful in determining what kind of campaigns consumers want and will get involved in. “It is a powerful way not only to engage with our readers, but to shape our marketing according to what our readers most readily identify with,” he said in a statement.
