Case study – Marketing for Joel and Cat by Ish Media

http://www.ishmedia.com.au

How did the Joel and Cat website and competition come about?

Penguin Publishing approached Ish Media to come up with an online campaign surrounding the launch of the book Joel and Cat Set the Story Straight. The book was aimed at 12–16 year olds.

We were given the book to read and from this created a pitch containing ideas, audience research and budget. We gave Penguin two options – the ‘Blue Sky Approach’ and the ‘Get to the Point’ approach. The Blue Sky approach was a vision for true character extension online and integration with the print version of the book along with low-level social networking tools and the Tandem SMS Story event. The Get to the Point approach stripped out all of the extra content and functionality and concentrated on the Tandem SMS Story application and competition.

We ended up going with the Tandem SMS Story event and competition – as this seemed to be the strongest part of the proposition.

Describe the creative involvement of both Ish Media and the authors Nick Earls and Rebecca Sparrow?

We worked directly with Penguin rather than Nick or Rebecca. It was a combination of internal marketing and strategy departments and then Penguin relaying this information and managing the relationship with Nick and Rebecca. The process was incredibly streamlined with Penguin. They were invested whole-heartedly in the project and gave us the creative support as we needed it without being controlling over the concept.

Reading the book gave us clear direction for the concept. Given that the premise was based on a tandem storytelling class project between two characters it seemed inevitable that we would try and do something that gave the audience a chance to experience how this works and the fun you can have with it.

What was the response like from the readers and the authors?

The authors were involved in creating the starting chapters for the tandem stories and generally were very invested in its on-going development. They were given administration capabilities to enable control over the direction the tandems were taking.

For the audience – we had great responses mixed with kids going crazy over the fact that they could SMS their responses into the site and see them instantly published. There was a substantial amount of curatorial effort behind the scenes ... but overall it was a hugely entertaining thing to watch and read. Ah the minds of teenagers!

It is obviously difficult to measure how many readers went from the book to the site and vice versa, but as far as I’m aware Penguin was happy with the overall response.

How did your experience with interactive projects inform your work on this project?

Ish works with a number of independent producers to create digital strategies and concepts for existing works. This experience was invaluable in our work with Penguin. Approaching existing creative properties means spending a substantial amount of time digesting the work, looking closely at the demographic and dissecting the key concepts and objectives of the property. Sometimes it’s easier to be the ‘fresh approach’. Coming into an existing creative work gives you an outsider perspective – a little closer to the way audiences may respond to it.

What advice would you give an author thinking about marketing or even extending their content online?

Looking at audience trends, researching popular methods of content consumption and understanding your demographic are key steps to creating a truly relevant experience online. Take the core concepts of your work and reflect on how and what these concepts mean in the context of another platform (like online and mobile). The experience of reading a book is inherently different to the experience of content online. Think carefully about this and try to create concepts that give credit and sometimes control to audiences in other environments.

It’s also important to outline your key objectives at the beginning. What do you actually want from your online audience? Is this about driving people to the book or vice versa or both?

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