Spinebreakers.co.uk will feature editorial controlled by a group of nine teenagers aged between 13 and 18-years-old, supported by a network of contributing UK teen editors.
Penguin’s online team will work with three agencies. The Plant won out on a competitive pitch for site design, Content and Code won the site build work, and Livity is handling youth marketing to test the teen market. This follows Penguin-commissioned research findings that three in four teenagers get their book information online and want more. Some 69 per cent of teens think they will be doing more reading online in the future and teens who rate reading as cool are the most frequent visitors to social networking sites.
Spinebreakers.co.uk follows Penguin shifting away from interruptive ad formats towards reader interactivity. Anna Rafferty, digital marketing director at Penguin UK, said: “Our online strategy is all about engaging people around content. People get emotionally involved with books, we want to bring that feeling into our marketing campaigns and facilitate dialogue.”
Last month Penguin created a MySpace page, where users can chat direct with authors including Toby Litt. This week it also launched Specialtopics.co.uk to market Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and created a 14-piece, weekly, episodic audio podcast.
Rafferty added: “The shift to interactive is completely natural. Obviously marketing depends on the book, but I can’t think a campaign that wouldn’t have an online element. We always think about where consumers are and target accordingly – it would be foolish for us not to be online.”
Spinebreakers.co.uk is due to launch in September.
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