Book Depository

Engaging with a global audience with impactful brand-position messaging

We Are Acuity has been working with Book Depository for many years now, primarily on creative ways to help it engage with its massive global customer base. One regular project has been to create everything Book Depository needs to make an impact at book fairs around the world, including Hong Kong, Argentina, Finland and Taiwan.

Listen instead?

Challenge

The book fairs themselves are on a huge scale, with exhibitors and visitors from all over the world. In this busy, buzzing atmosphere, it’s essential Book Depository stands out and attracts the attention of as many of these visitors as possible. It’s not just about raising awareness of the brand, it’s about engaging on a one-to-one level, whether that’s directly with people on the stand, or by encouraging visitors to explore the online store. And from an employee perspective, it’s essential that the Book Depository teams at these events are proud to be part of the stand we’ve created, and are inspired to do a fantastic job.

Insight

Two of Book Depository’s defining characteristics are firstly the incredible selection of books on its website (over 20 million and counting), and the fact that there’s free delivery on every single order. We know that these two facts help separate Book Depository from the competition, so in the busy, crowded environment of the global book fairs, we knew these messages had to hit fast and hard, and with audiences who perhaps didn’t have English as their first language.

Solution

Is there a better way to show the sheer volume of books available at Book Depository than to show the sheer volume of books available at Book Depository? We didn’t think so. We had a great idea, and also a plan that would bring it to life.

We started by collecting as many book covers as we could from Book Depository. In total, we collected 36,000 assets. Once we’d gone through these and filtered some out, we were left with a grand total of 10,000 book covers to feature.

That number of covers wasn’t overkill either. Our idea was to completely cover an entire wall with the covers, and then have our key message – FREE DELIVERY ON 20 MILLION BOOKS – punch through the design in huge letters formed from lighter-coloured covers.

It would have been extremely time consuming to create this by hand, so to make best use of the budget, we used a bit of AI software called Turbo Mosaic which created the background, then colour-matched covers to create the all-important strapline. Like all AI programs, it was a great start, but needed our creative finesse to improve the final design and give it the real impact we were after.

Results

The finished wall made a very impressive visual spectacle which was a fantastic head-turner from a distance, and an invitation-to-explore close up. It really caught the eye of the passing public, and has been used many times for book fairs all over the world.

Book Depository was so pleased with the wall that we were commissioned to create versions for the walls for their head offices in London, Gloucester and Madrid, where staff are inspired by them every day.

It really was a job of huge numbers: on show at dozens of book fairs, 10,000 book covers, and encouraging hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Book Depository website to browse over 20 million titles.

Dozens of Book Fairs

Three Head Offices

Hundreds of Thousands of visitors

Let's talk.

FREE DISCOVERY CALL

Click below to arrange a chat with Peter to
see how we can maximise your marketing.