An Industry First For Open Books Open Minds!
13 Sep 06
Nationwide Textbook Promotion Breaks 1st September 2006
For the first time academic publishers and booksellers are working together on an industry wide campaign aiming to drive textbook sales at ‘Back to University time’ in September. Most of the major publishers and over 100 campus bookshops will be supporting the campaign, which will tempt students to try for £200,000 in prizes by buying textbooks during September and October. The campaign is based around 750,000 prize draw scratch cards to be distributed at tills.
The prize draw will be marketed online via popular students websites, aiming to generate over 4million impressions. This will be backed up by point of sale promotion and outbound email from booksellers. The campaign has been designed by Bonsai Marketing Communications, specialists in marketing to students.
This promotion is part of a multi-faceted continuing campaign to raise the profile of textbooks, to remind lecturers and students of the value of textbooks and of reading widely. The campaign started last year with a publisher-led campaign aimed at lecturers (see www.openbooksopenminds.co.uk), promoting research which shows that lectures want students to read more and students still value recommendations for appropriate textbooks. Publishers and booksellers realise that textbooks are now in competition with other sources of information (and entertainment) for the student pound, and extra effort is needed to support the market.
Dominic Knight, Managing Director of Palgrave Macmillian and one of the founding members of the team behind ‘Open Books Open Minds’ is keen to stress that this activity is just the start of an industry move determined to protect the future of academic textbooks. Knight said: “We are delighted with the support of the publishers and booksellers who have come together in this exciting industry-wide offensive. Textbooks are critical to the future of our respective businesses as well as the future of today and tomorrow’s student and the Open Books Open Mind campaign is a long-term strategic driver that we intend to support into the future”.
What is the 2006 Open Books Open Minds Campaign (OBOM2006)?
The 2006 Back to University promotion will launch in September this year and will continue through to the end of October. The campaign will be an “instant win” promotion during which over three quarters of a million scratch cards will be handed out. Students will receive a scratch card when they spend £15 or more on a textbook in participating shops. The scratch card will give students the opportunity to win prizes from a total prize fund of £200,000. The scratch card will also double as a £2 off voucher, redeemable against book purchase during November and December. Further information and terms and conditions are available at www.areyouawinner.co.uk
Who is sponsoring the Campaign?
The Publishers Association’s Textbook Action Group (TAG) has created an industry-wide campaign promoting the value of textbooks to students and lecturers. The Publishers Association is the leading trade organisation serving book, journal and electronic publishers in the UK . Over 85 bookshops are participating in the OBOM2006 campaign among these are branches of Blackwell and John Smiths in England and Scotland together with the bookshops at the Universities of Canterbury, De Monfort, Leicester, Marylebone Books, Northampton, Plymouth, Sussex, Surrey, Tresham Institute and Warwick.
Participating publishers include Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Edinburgh University Press, Elsevier, Hodder Arnold, Oxford University Press, Pearson Education, Palgrave Macmillan, Sage, Taylor and Francis, Thomson Learning and Wiley.
Contributions were also made by Nielsen BookData.
If you have any questions, please contact
Katherine Alexander at The Publishers Association kalexander@publishers.org.uk
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All information and prices correct at time of writing.
