High-tech search
for a book of secrets
Teens are invited to use a special app to find a mysterious book
By Toni Fitzgerald
Nov 3, 2011
The way to a teenage girl's heart is through her cell phone. It's also the way to her wallet.
That was the idea behind a recent campaign for a young adult novel targeting girls 12-17 that played out in bookstores across Canada.
The challenge was to engage this attention-span-deficient audience with something beyond the usual advertising QR codes or texts.
The end result was something very cool: A cell phone app that showed off different aspects of the book.
The app employed augmented reality, or 3D objects that appear to pop out on the phone, to tell the book's story.
The campaign was for the Harper Collins book "This Dark Endeavor," a frothy recounting of a young Victor Frankenstein's apprenticeship.
Harper asked its agency, Dentsu Canada, to come up with a cool way to engage teenage girls. Right away the agency thought of cell phones.
"Central to the story is the discovery of an ancient book in a hidden library," says Shelly Dwyer, associate creative director at Dentsu Canada.
"We developed an augmented reality concept and in-store installation that recreates that theme so the target can almost feel as if they are part of the story. An AR mobile app was developed as well as an online AR web site."
The campaign was deployed in Chapters Indigo bookstores in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa.
Upon entering the store, customers encountered a faux bookshelf with old, dusty books.
Sitting on a table in front of the bookshelf were two smartphones (tethered to the table to prevent theft) and an oval picture frame displaying an invitation to passersby.
"Only one book holds the secrets of the dark library," it read. "Can you find it?"
People could use either their phone or a phone on the table. If they chose to use their phone, there were directions on how to download a special app.
They could then use that app to try to find the right trigger on the faux bookshelf to launch the augmented reality show on the phone, sort of like a QR code.
But the fun of it was that the trigger was unmarked. People had to search for the so-called markerless trigger, which was in the shape of a book.
Once they had found the trigger and snapped a photo of it, users were treated to a narrated plot summary and a short animated presentation that included dueling swords, a beautiful woman and lightning streaking across a cloud.
The campaign worked because it was so engaging.
It reached its target audience via a medium they are comfortable with, their cell phones, and gave them something to talk about, as well as a preview of the book.
It also seemed to be a success.
Traffic to the author's web site, where the augmented reality show was posted, rose 25 percent since the launch of the campaign in late September, and sales of the book spiked 45 percent versus the five weeks before the campaign launched.
|
|
|
