It’s the brand stupid
The Author Winter 2007
If you want a lasting career as an author you need to become a brand. It’s a message on which book trade and advertising professionals are united. But there is deep division between the two professions about whether publishing can deliver what it takes to create a brand.
“Branding is almost non-existent in publishing,” is the robust opinion of Dominic Proctor, worldwide c.e.o. of advertising giant Mindshare. That may seem harsh to a trade responsible for global brands names from Steven King to J K Rowling, but that, claims Proctor, is because the book trade does not understand that branding means more than a prominent place in Smiths.
Unlike three for twos, branding is for life not just launch week. “Books and authors are treated, as far as I can see, as a series of one-off projects rather than enduring marketing campaigns,” he explains. “‘I understand all the pragmatic reasons why that would be the case (publishers are dealing with continuous launches like the film industry), but authors and books have a longer shelf life than films, therefore there is an opportunity to build them as brands over the long term.”
His opinion is shared by Steve Hatch, joint m.d. of Mediaedge;cia, the sixth biggest advertising agency in the world, and co-author of marketing textbook Rigorous Magic: Communication Ideas And Their Application (John Wiley). The trade is, he says, over-reliant on traditional promotional tools – in-store campaigns, review coverage and launch PR. Such short-termism leaves little time for an author’s brand to establish itself. “It is all well and good in terms of readers already in the market looking for a new read, but it strikes me that most publishers see it as ‘job done’ at that point and think ‘we’ve launched it and it’s doing okay so we can move on to the next book on our list’,” he explains.
This approach, according to Hatch, risks undercapitalising market buzz. “It undermines the basic nature of the book,” he contends. “The strongest driver for sales of books is word-of-mouth and publishers should be thinking of books as communities more than things that sit on bookshelves. Books can be living things.”
Publishers rightly contend that their marketing is hamstrung by a 21st Century industry structured around retailers not writers. So-called co-merchandising schemes, which see up to £50,000 and extra discount handed over by publishers for a place in a three-for-two or two-for-£10 promotion, soak up budgets leaving little money for above-the-line promotion at launch let alone beyond the two-week shelf-life of most retail promotions. “A marketing director now is not necessarily there to deliver a marketing budget, they are there to deliver a sales budget,” is the bitter observation of the managing director of one leading publishing house.
But multi-buy marketing is about product not brand – it promotes retailers’ added-value philosophy not author’s names and is predicated upon quantity rather than quality of customer transactions. As a method of pushing shampoo it is great, as a means of building an author’s career it is inappropriate.
It’s a point not lost on publishers: one sales and marketing director moans: “Over the last five years we have seen a 25% increase every year in the amount of money demanded by retailers for co-operative merchandising. I get so frustrated about it because retailers do so little to warrant the money. There is a real responsibility for retailers to create markets as well as reach the market already out there, but what do they do? Another three for two!”
Value added is at variance with consumer attitudes to “must-have” products. Consumers are willing to pay top dollar for premium brand because it makes a lifestyle statement. In multi-buys, a book is a mere component of the deal. Slash the price and bung it in with a bunch of other names and you water down any value statement so that the brand has as much kudos as rip off Burberry bought from a market stall.
Despite the mixed signals sent by the book trade, authors do break out of the one hit wonderland to establish brand names and long careers. How is it done, and can publishers reinforce brands outside retail promotions? Joanna Prior, marketing and publicity director at Penguin, is adamant it is possible.
Prior has had a hand in the career of a roster of brand name authors, most notably Zadie Smith. Good branding, she believes, is a matter of confidence. “A lot of what it comes from is an unshakable belief that you have the ‘real thing’ on your hands, that you have an author who is going to write for a career not just one book.”
Such belief, she believes, should fuel publishers’ confidence to create distinct identities that set authors apart. In the case of Smith this meant an emphasis on her distinctive name using bold cover design and tactical publicity that showcased her as a voice for a new generation.
Cover design is important in branding books for other reasons, says Andrew Hunter, creative director of Edinburgh-based graphic design agency Redpath. “In a world increasingly filled with visual stimuli, audiences are simply conditioned to pick up visual triggers. From the clothes we wear, to the interior decoration of our house, to the car we drive, we send out signals about the way we live and the values we adhere to,” he explains. “We ask to be judged by our covers.”
As a result, he feels the trade needs to be clear about how jacket design impacts on readers’ self-image. That was what Penguin got right with Smith’s covers: they are bold, young and hip, and by association her readers like to think they are too.
While retailers may want to signpost an author’s potential market – especially in genre fiction –they risk undermining the brand if they follow the market – just ask women writers whose books were saddled with pastel covers whether they wrote chick lit or not. If you remain doubtful that a cover can undermine brand ask bookshop customers buying crime or romance to spot their favourite books with the title and authors’ names blanked out. The answer will depress you.
Amanda Ross, the powerful producer of Richard & Judy, understands the power of distinctive design. “Television is visual so we think in terms of what will catch the eye,” she says. Me Too covers are simply bad TV. She was so frustrated by the homgenised covers gracing books submitted for the show’s book club, she asked publishers to change them. “Last year I got to the stage that if I had seen another woman in costume with no head and the title in a slanty script I would have thrown it across the room,” she explains.
Ross is one of the few in the business able to challenge supermarkets’ and Smiths’ demands for more of the same, but for those books not lucky enough to be picked for her book club, it remains hard to maintain confidence in a bold design strategy. Who wouldn’t jump if Asda or W H Smith said they will take 50,000 copies with a derivative cover?
Publishers should be more confident, however, because traditional retailers’ dominance of the market is breaking thanks to the internet, which provides publishers with unlimited branding opportunities, as Dominic Proctor points out. “Whether through embedded content, webasodes or blogs, there is so much need for content out there, and publishers should take advantage of that for their authors.”
Good internet marketing does not come cheap. Given the demands placed upon publishers’ budgets, can they afford to break a brand online? It’s the wrong question, according to Jens Bachem, managing director of online marketing and creative agency Digital Outlook, which has helped Chorion, Aardman Films and XBox build their properties’ online presence. As content providers Bachem says large publishers cannot afford not to break brands online. “Publishers’ efforts online compare poorly with other media, although they are clearly taking it more seriously… and they should,” he says. “In my mind, to really deliver a return for shareholders, publishers need to redefine their business more broadly and then look at how online can genuinely deliver value within the new context.”
Bachem shares the view of Dominic Proctor and Steve Hatch that branding is about building communities around a property – be that “property” the author, a character or, as in the case of XBox, product. Publishers are no longer in the paper business, he says, they are content providers with valuable intellectual property to sell – by any means possible. Steve Hatch agrees, but adds encouragingly: “It is not necessarily a lot of money to get in touch with the community out there. If I were a publisher, I would do a brokered content deal with Yahoo, which reaches millions of people in online book and other groups.”
It is the kind of scenario guaranteed to send a shudder down the spine of the average book trade traditionalist, be they author, editor, agent or publisher, but it should not. Such deals are not a threat, but an alternative way of extending an author’s reach beyond the confines of existing book buyers, who are an ageing and diminishing proportion of the population.
As Hatch points out, books and their authors are natural brands because they engage a wide community (their readers) in one thing (the book) and, if the book is well loved, readers will spread the word for the publisher and often seek to engage with them and their characters or subject matter at a deeper level, which is why book clubs and literary festivals have mushroomed. “What online does is give a publisher the opportunity to connect up communities of readers with their content. Publishers really shouldn’t to concentrate on the money, but on the thing that they have of value: influence and access, which is priceless,” Hatch observes. “It’s not money that is the problem with publishers,” he adds. “It’s the mentality.”
*This is an extended version of an article in the October issue of The Deal: the official magazine of the London Book Fair, which is edited by Danuta Kean.
Comments
Posted by Media Districts Entertainment Blog » It’s the brand stupid on 6 December 2007
[...] Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist created an interesting post today on Itâs the brand stupidHere’s a short outline [...]
Posted by Movies and Film Blog » It’s the brand stupid on 6 December 2007
[...] Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist created an interesting post today on Itâs the brand stupidHere’s a short outline [...]
Posted by Maria McCarthy on 6 December 2007
Fascinating article!
I’m ex charity-pr as well as being an author and will be running a workshop on Publicising Your Book at Bristol University on 8th December – almost fully booked, so shows there’s an acceptance among authors that at least having some understanding of the media bandwagon can be useful.
http://www.bris.ac.uk/english/cont-ed/dayschools.html
I suppose that branding has two aspects – if you’re lucky your publishers get involved and do it for you (get you the right cover, promotion etc).
But if you’re further down the pecking order then you have to do it yourself (well, the promotion, anyway) and often the type of things which help promotion along (willingness to splurge about turbulent love-life, unhappy childhood etc) isn’t really something a lot of authors want to get involved with.
It’s interesting though to see how many authors who aren’t natural self-promoters have still been tremendously successful (JK Rowling is famously shy, I met Louis de Bernieres before a reading once and he was very nervous about it). Though of course they both had fab covers!
It’s also interesting to look at examples where ‘quieter’ self-promotion and just keeping plugging away turning out books and building up a fanbase works – here I’m thinking of Marcia Willett, a Devon-based writer who does family sagas. I’ve attended one of Marcia’s excellent bookshop talks (no personal-life splurging at all – engaging stories about how she got published, develops her characters etc). She’s become very much in demand at library talks etc and is perhaps an example of how playing a long game (I think she’s on about her 10th book and is getting all those railway-poster adverts now which I don’t think she was in the beginning).
Not everyone is going to fit into the whole Zadie Smith (young, hip, urban) style of publicity – is v much about looking at self and audience relationship in a very individual way and working with that…. I’ve slogged away doing zillions of local radio interviews on learning to drive, post on learner-driver sites etc, etc… of course, don’t have any idea of the extent to which this really affects book sales… but it is part of a conscious effort on my part to turn myself into some sort of ‘learning-to-drive’ guru brand! And I’m genuinely enjoying it, which is very important, I feel…. If authors feel uncomfortable with the self-promotion thing I do feel that’s going to show and maybe it’s best for them to limit what they do to stuff they do feel ok about.
Would write more but is such a big topic will wait for others to chip in first!
all best
Maria
http://www.mariamccarthy.co.uk
Posted by Will Smith » It’s the brand stupid on 6 December 2007
[...] Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist wrote an interesting post today on Itâs the brand stupidHere’s a quick excerpt The Author Winter 2007 If you want a lasting career as an author you need to become a brand. It’s a message on which book trade and advertising professionals are united. But there is deep division between the two professions about whether publishing can deliver what it takes to create a brand. “Branding is almost non-existent in publishing,” is the robust opinion of Dominic Proctor, worldwide c.e.o. of advertising giant Mindshare. That may seem harsh to a trade responsible for global brands n [...]
Posted by Overlooked Films of the 1990s » Blog Archive » It’s the brand stupid on 6 December 2007
[...] It’s the brand stupidBy Danuta KeanCover design is important in branding books for other reasons, says Andrew Hunter, creative director of Edinburgh-based graphic design agency Redpath. “In a world increasingly filled with visual stimuli, audiences are simply conditioned …Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist – http://www.danutakean.com/blog [...]
Posted by Albums Blog » Blog Archive » It’s the brand stupid on 6 December 2007
[...] It’s the brand stupidBy Danuta KeanThat may seem harsh to a trade responsible for global brands names from Steven King to JK Rowling, but that, claims Proctor, is because the book trade does not understand that branding means more than a prominent place in Smiths. …Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist – http://www.danutakean.com/blog [...]
Posted by It’s the brand stupid — Top 100 books on 6 December 2007
[...] The Author Winter 2007 If you want a lasting career as an author you need to become a brand. Its a message on which book trade and advertising professionals are united. But there is deep division between the two professions about whether publishing can deliver what it takes to create a brand. Branding is almost non-existent in publishing, is the robust opinion of Dominic Proctor, worldwide c.e.o. of advertising giant Mindshare. That may seem harsh to a trade responsible for global brands n source: Its the brand stupid, Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist [...]
Posted by roger on 6 December 2007
Great article, Danuta.
My day job is as an advertising copywriter, so it was interesting for me to observe how the marketing side of things worked when I had a book to promote. It simply is unlike any other product out there. Word of mouth is essential, and if that doesn’t take off, what can you do?
Well, I think you can do quite a lot online, putting yourself about, though it all has to be done carefully. Any overt plugging will probably backfire. It’s a hard slog, in truth.
My press officer at Faber seems really pleased that I have things like a blog and a myspace page. It seems like it is the minimum though and there will come a time when every writer, almost, is doing the same thing.
I must say that Faber have done a fantastic job with my covers, building a consistent look for me. (Though it was weird to hear myself described as a brand, however apologetically.)
Posted by Danuta Kean on 6 December 2007
Thanks for the feedback. I think we need to get over the brand word and not feel weird about it. A lot of people in publishing don’t actually understand the concept of brand, they mistake it for something quantifiable. I had an interesting conversation with Sir Ronald Cohen the other day, he is the man who brought venture capital to the UK and has just written a book about business. He talked about brand heritage, and how businesses need to plan ahead and reinvent the brand values for each new generation. It is something I think certain retailers have failed to do. He also talked about how businesses can become complacent about their brand, presuming that it will last just because it has been around for a long time. They forget that brands age as much as people. This happened with M&S until Stuart Rose came along and changed things with George Davies. We can all think of author brands that have failed to live – Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley and Jean Plaidy are author brands that failed to plan ahead. I am sure that you can think of others….
Posted by Music News » Blog Archive » It’s the brand stupid on 6 December 2007
[...] It’s the brand stupidBy Danuta KeanThat may seem harsh to a trade responsible for global brands names from Steven King to JK Rowling, but that, claims Proctor, is because the book trade does not understand that branding means more than a prominent place in Smiths. …Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist – http://www.danutakean.com/blog [...]
Posted by Economics Topics News » Blog Archive » It’s the brand stupid on 6 December 2007
[...] It’s the brand stupidBy Danuta KeanThe trade is, he says, over-reliant on traditional promotional tools – in-store campaigns, review coverage and launch PR. Such short-termism leaves little time for an author’s brand to establish itself. “It is all well and good in terms …Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist – http://www.danutakean.com/blog [...]
Posted by Cities and Towns of Vermont » Blog Archive » It’s the brand stupid on 7 December 2007
[...] It’s the brand stupidBy Danuta Kean“Branding is almost non-existent in publishing,” is the robust opinion of Dominic Proctor, worldwide ceo of advertising giant Mindshare. That may seem harsh to a trade responsible for global brands names from Steven King to JK Rowling, …Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist – http://www.danutakean.com/blog [...]
Posted by Richard Havers on 7 December 2007
Danuta, as usual a great article that gets to the heart of the matter. Let’s hope some people in publishing take note. It’s interesting that the amount of money asked for (demanded by?) high street retailers is on the up. Of course what it’s doing is putting off the evil day, from their point of view, when their bottom line, bottoms out. As Roger says the brand thing is a bit daunting for some, but as you say authors need to get over it. Similarly they need to have a clear idea of how the marketing is going to work for their work. There are only so many TV tie ins, so there have to be other ways for non fiction to function. There’s also a big difference between fiction and non-fiction.
We’ve had some success with our Airline Confidential blog tie ( http://airlineconfidential.blogspot.com/ )in as a way of spreading the word, unfortunately we have a publisher who has helped to redefine inept. They just don’t understand marketing and have no idea how to spin the wheels.
Posted by Emma Darwin on 7 December 2007
Great article, Danuta, thank you.
Yes, I think we authors need to get over the branding thing, but it’s not easy. We associate brands with recognisability, unchangingness, with always being reassuringly the same – the Oxo Factor, or the Agatha Christie Factor, if you like – whereas it’s in the cussed, hard-to-pin-down, slippery nature of creativity to need and feed on the new and different.
But the Zadie Smith example is encouraging, because she’s been branded not for the genre of books she writes (except in that they belong to that broad and peculiar church, Lit Fic), but for being the produce of her self. Not all of us can manage the cool, urban, multicultural thing as well as she does, but if I can imagine the Emma Darwin brand of the future as ‘good writer, good storyteller, let’s have a look at the new one,’ then I don’t mind.
But we want to control our brand. Maybe we’ll all feel more comfortable with the idea if we also realise we can. At the moment, operating at the sharpest, most insecure end of the book trade, we don’t have the nerve, or the chutzpah: most authors are too grateful to have a deal at all, and too nervous of what’s waiting at the end of the contract.
Posted by Richard Havers on 8 December 2007
Emma, your point about controlling your brand is a very important one. The major obstacle that I can see is getting the other parties involved in your brand to get ‘on message’. For me the greatest challenge for publishing is to really understand and make marketing work. As Danuta says in the article it’s not so much about delivering a marketing budget but a sales budget these days. As the article finishes up by saying, “it’s about a mentality.”
Posted by Bob Blackman on 8 December 2007
Danuta,
You quoted Steve Hatch as saying “If I were a publisher, I would do a brokered content deal with Yahoo.”
What did he mean exactly by a brokered content deal?
Posted by Judy Strachan on 8 December 2007
This is another great article, Danuta. I have a double interest as I write fiction (no novels yet published, sadly, but I have had short stories published) and I also lecture in marketing. As it happens, I teach a 3rd year module called Contemporary Brand Management and have, for some time, been thinking about doing some academic research into the marketing and especially the branding of fiction.
One thing that has always struck me is how the imprint name means very little to book buyers: they really aren’t bothered whether the book they buy is published by Headline, Picador or whoever (except possibly Penguin, which has more of a brand personality, I suspect, than any other imprint). For readers the author is the brand and I don’t think publishers have yet come to grips with what that means in terms of marketing and promotion.
But being a brand creates a tension for authors, as it means knowing your brand values and brand personality and then sticking to them: which not all authors may want to do. Writers develop, so an author needs to ensure their branding isn’t too tightly tied to a restrictive style and genre.
I do agree with the ‘it’s about mentality’ comment but it’s not just about the mentality of publishers: branding is, above all else, what goes on in the consumer mindspace.
Thanks again, Danuta. There is much food for thought in this topic.
Posted by Emma Darwin on 8 December 2007
I agree with Judy that sticking to your brand values doesn’t come easily to authors. But I’m not sure it’s inevitable that we’re doomed to an absolute straitjacket. Brands do develop, even if slowly. And it can work in reverse, at least for really well-established authors, so that brand value can be used to make something new acceptable to the market. Why else would brands like M&S or John Lewis have joined up with financial services institutions? There was something to be made from their perceived values being applied to a sector that consumers feel much more equivocal about.
Posted by Graeme K Talboys on 8 December 2007
I found this deeply depressing. Yet another layer of flummery and jargon which add up to nothing. What next for authors? We write the book at our own risk, we have to tout it round (fair enough), then we have to market it, we have to develop a ‘persona’, we have to glam ourselves up (and heaven help any of us who are housebound disabled – no room for that is there), and now we have to become a brand. What next? Put up the costs involved in printing the book?
Posted by Greg Stekelman on 9 December 2007
It’s a good article. I think the main problem for most writers is that 90% of branding is out of their hands. Most writers are on a one-book deal and publishers are more concerned with selling that one book than establishing a long-term sellable brand. Writers can do a lot on their own, in terms of contacting friends and getting their face “out there” but they generally lack the connections and infrastructure available to publishers. I think that most writers are fairly forward-thinking and understand that their books are product, and need to be marketed accordingly. I am just not sure how much can be done without extensive backing from the publishers.
Posted by Danuta Kean on 10 December 2007
Thanks for the feedback everyone. The main reason I post articles like this is that I think these issues really need to be debated. Brokered content means basically licensing your work or part of your work for use by a site or web provider etc. As for the issue of brand, I have a few observations:
1. This article really is a comment on the poor marketing done by many publishers and booksellers, which is short term and fails to establish values around an author. Sales and marketing are not the same thing.
2. You don’t have to fix an author in amber if they are branded. In fact, as with so called heritage brands like Chanel No 5 or Worth perfume, it can be dangerous to fix a brand. I would argue that Worth has failed because it didn’t evolve and change, while Chanel No 5 has evolved and subtly changed over the years. Of course authors are not simple products, but they have values and unique characteristics that can be marketed – and by that I mean communicated to audiences of potential readers. It is worth lookign at what happens around actors and musicians. Classical musicians and actors like Judy Dench and Helen Mirren are brands who add their values to any production with which they are involved.
3. Graeme, you don’t have to ‘develop’ a persona, you just need to recognise what your persona is and then use that. I would argue that there is an angle that is easier to publicise for a housebound disabled person who writes an astonishing novel and overcomes their difficulties than yet another 20-something pretty girl who has written a first novel about living in London.
Zadie Smith was marketed as urban because that was appropriate, that does not mean that is the only way to market an author. With good branding one size definitely does not fit all, and it should be a combination of the personality of the author and their work.
Posted by Martin Edwards on 10 December 2007
This is an excellent and thought-provoking article.
The particular thought it’s provoked in me is: is it possible for a Reliable but Scarcely Bestselling Midlist Crime Writer to be rebranded as a Premier League Standard Exponent of the Form? Not easy (though I hope not impossible) to achieve that sort of evolution, after ten or eleven books.
I suppose the best solution is simply to write novels that are truly irresistible. But even then, it’s common for really good books to fail to register with the public simply through lack of the oxygen of publicity.
Posted by Teresa Hamilton-Jones on 11 December 2007
Danuta, you are going on about marketing and branding again and you are still failing to recognise that a good well written book will sell itself and too much marketing will just teach a discerning reader not to trust the PR.
In my view it is not necessary to brand a book. If it is well written then it will be well received. Most people do not stick to a particular genre, most people like a well written page turner.
Posted by Martyn Daniels on 12 December 2007
Danuta
I read yor article with great interest as i have agreed to write a Brave New World ; Chapter two which will look at the digitisation issues in publishing from the author perspective.
What i struggle with is who’s brand is it? Is the brand the author, the genre, the publisher, the reatiler or all of the above? Who owns what brand and is responsible for its development and promotion? In the long tail world can we have long tail branding and how does that differ from front list branding?
My questions are about who actually is responsible for the long haul or are we still stuck in the 13 week window syndrome that has plagued book publishing and is not about developing direct marketing and brand marketing but simply mass marketing?
Why do agents cutthe deal and often run? Are they the business manager or merely the dating agents or eastate agents that only provide introducory services?
Why expect an editor to do more than shape, edit and position titles they aren’t marketeers?
Why expect a publisher to do more than promote and sell books? The author could be with them for a long time or move on and afterall the relationship is based on a deal which is based on sales. If the brand is owned by the author then do they have sufficient say in it development and representation or do they in effect sell it to the publisher who has their own agenda?
Branding is very important but lets sort out what brand, who owns it and how it should be developed and not merge all branding issues into one basket.
Thanks for getting my brain working this cold morning.
Posted by Carolyn Howard-Johnson on 13 December 2007
Danuta: It appears that we are barking at the same tree. Your blog on branding. That’s probably why Nadine Laman (a friend of yours? ) sent me your link. I talk about branding frequently in my newsletter but it all started back in my publicist/marketing days. You might be interested in my book The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won’t. I’d love to hear from you. hojonews @ aol.com
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Posted by Romance Books Online on 25 December 2007
[...] It’s the brand stupid [...]