In praise of innovative agency work

We set out to do things a little differently with the paperback publication of Gautam Malkani’s superb debut novel Londonstani and asked the creative team at the agency Apt Studio to come up with some ideas.

They have worked on high profile publishing projects including The Life of Pi and The Long Tail and helped us develop a marketing plan for Londonstani.

One of the first things Apt did was research reader comments posted all over the web in response to the hardback release. What they found was overwhelmingly positive — which, interestingly, contrasted with some of the media response to the book last year.

For the first element of getting the news out about the book, they suggested included distributing sample chapters online and through independent record shops and bars – the aim being to get Londonstani extracts into readers’ hands so they can make up their own minds about the book.

The second stage to the approach, and the one that really stands out for me, was the commissioning of the graffiti artist Remi/Rough to create an original piece of artwork to lead our campaign graphics. Remi’s work is very striking, he uses different styles to reflect the nature and tone of Londonstani. You can see the graffiti artwork, view the film Apt created showing Remi at work and a load of other things at myspace.com/londonstani.

It’s good to see an agency with original ideas contributing to book marketing – it never hurts any of us working in publisher marketing departments to think about how we can do things a little differently.

recent comments from Londonstani’s myspace friends.