The Gloves Come Off! book launch campaign
As for our ad campaign we produced a set of some 25 posters, all predominately typographic in nature, all highlighting some aspect of the book. Out of these posters we made larger gallery versions as well as smaller ones for street distribution.
How do you begin to speak to the public about a book dealing with the relationship between religion, science and philosophy?
It’s not an easy task for sure, as the topic is a real minefield, whichever side of the theological fence you happen to stand on.
But despite its inherent difficulty, or perhaps because of it, this was the exact question we were faced with when looking into promoting our latest book called The Gloves Come Off! — the Philosophical Investigations of a Duck.
For those unfamiliar with our oeuvre one thing should be clarified: Mr. Duck is an alter-ego of Christoffer. And in this book he gets to perform an 800-plus page long monologue about topics that have preoccupied his little mind for the past decades.
One way to approach the question would have been to be subtle and unassuming as not to provoke any undue conflict. Our answer? Well no, that sounds boring. We’ll take a distinctly different path!
Thus we chose to go all out with strong typography, witty copywriting, striking photography, and a strict black and white color scheme. Our aim was to make an impression, using a blend of bold graphics and humor. Our goal – to startle people, amuse them, and make them think about the topics presented without providing a definite answer one way or the other.
The fonts chosen for this task were the same ones employed in the book itself (to be featured in an upcoming post). Our picks this time were Knockout by Jonathan Hoefler and Zuzana Licko’s interpretation of Bodoni, Filosofia, and finally Trade Gothic for some of the smaller text.
Our approach was three-pronged – a street campaign consisting of a set of 25 different posters, a social media campaign consisting of cool and at times self-depreciating photography and illustrations, and finally a snail mail campaign for the media with a mix of different things, such as press releases, photos, stickers and an invitation to the publication party.
In our estimation we did well, but as always with matters concerning taste, opinions may vary. Did we pull it off? You decide.
We made three posters in the vein of protest posters. The first is a translation of the opening verse of the Vedanta Sutra, which in transliterated Sanskrit reads as “Athāto brahma jijñāsā”.
The caption on the second poster is lifted from Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Finally our third protest poster asks the viewer not, it should be noted, necessarily to buy the book, but to read it.
Then one day the streets of Helsinki were flooded by our posters. Note that the posters themselves were done in black and white, and the red was stamped on, as can be seen by the varying positions of the added information.
As we love snail mail we also sent out invitations on paper. They featured, well, obviously, the invitations, our portraits and presentations, as well as a letter of endorsements.
As for our online campaign, we made a set of cool teasers, two of which we’ll share here. Take notice of the pure joy of the proud parents!
T-shirts as well! After all, we had to have something to wear for the party.
Our campaign was quite successful, as is evident from the photos, and we feel confident to state that few books of philosophy and theology have received as warm of a welcome!
