January 18, 2012

The best/worst print book ad of 2011

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Book ads have always been pretty generic. Open any book review this weekend and you’ll see a lot of “unique,” “striking,” “devastating,” “masterpieces,” of “glorious fun,” “brilliantly rendered,” and “uniquely satisfying.” “Major treats,” “from places never dreamed of.” “Worthy additions and “intriguing tales” that “can’t be recommended enough.”

Boring right? We’ve all seen these before so when an actually “unique,” “striking” ad comes along it’s “a surprise and a delight.”

The ad we discussed most in the office this year was Harper Perennial’s “Reading Cat’s What’s Up!” ad. I’ll let it speak for its glorious self:

Genius right? It embraces a superficial commercial appeal all while giving a knowing wink. I don’t need to explain why this ad delights, it just does. Everybody loves kittens and if you’re looking at this ad in N+1 you probably love books as well. Case closed, let’s all start printing money. But wait… there’s something wrong here. Scroll down a little. . .
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Now, can you name a single book that appeared in that ad?

Just one.

There were four so this should be easy. . .

Having a hard time? Yeah, so did we. The ad is eye catching but for all the wrong reasons. It markets the Harper Perennial brand brilliantly but the individual titles get lost in the adorable kitten orgy. And for that reason this is the best and the worst print book ad of 2011.

We’ve always enjoyed imagining the creative meeting where this ad was born. Kudos to Harper for running with something so unorthodox and if you’re the brain behind this ad we’d love to hear from you, if only to put a name to all the good times we’ve had enjoying your work. Genuinely—well done!

 

 

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