| Advertiser | Penguin Random House |
| Platform | Bidstack |
| Media Owner | Bidstack |
| Target Audience | 20-29 Males |
Objective
Penguin Random House were building their marketing activity around the release of comedian Romesh Rangananthan’s new book, Straight Outta Crawley in the lead up to Christmas 2019. Their aim was to reach a new, male focused demographic and they wanted to explore native in-game advertising as part of their media strategy.
Solution
We chose Football Manager 19 as the game to deliver this campaign because it served the demographic and audience that Penguin Random House were looking to target. Bidstack created custom-built creatives and targeted these towards males across Football Manager 2019 during the launch of the new game, with upweights around London on Arsenal game days as Rangananthan is a passionate and well known fan of the club.
Results
The campaign created a lot of noise in the publishing world and won the ‘Guerilla Marketing Campaign of the Year’ award at the 2019 Book Marketing Society Awards. The judges of the category commented on the use of “clever and efficient advertising hoardings in an online football game” as a contributing factor to their award. The innovative and targeted approach was an industry first for book marketing.
The book went on to become a ‘Sunday Times Bestseller’ and exceeded sales expectations.
Client Testimonial
The partnership was a fantastic, eye-catching way of letting predominantly male gamers know that Straight Outta Crawley was out. In-game advertising was a great way to reach the tricky 20-something male audience who do not engage as frequently on social media platforms.
Alice Murphy-Pyle
Senior Marketing Manager, Transworld Random House.
