Penguin India
Background
Penguin Books launched in India in 1985 and began publishing in 1987 with only six books. As of 2020, the brand is publishing over 250 new titles every year with an active backlist of over 3000 titles. Penguin India is a part of Penguin Random House, the world’s leading trade publisher.
Brief
The year was 2010 and Facebook had just started gaining traction in India. Penguin India wanted to take their first steps into the world of social media and emerge as a pioneer in the digital space.
We’ve worked with the brand for over 8 years to promote authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, Ruskin Bond, James Patterson, Dan Brown and more, for their book launches, social media strategies as well as exploring newer content avenues such as eBooks, Audiobooks, Brand Partnerships etc. We also worked on digital strategies for their events like Jaipur Literature Festival, Penguin Annual Lecture, Spring Fever, etc.
Social Strategy
Connect authors and readers on digital platforms by creating a friendly and approachable brand that owns reading.
Going beyond promoting books and authors through engaging storytelling, we also emphasised on remaining topical and current and leading important social, cultural and political conversations.
Promoting Authors
Case Study | Haruki Murakami
We worked on promoting the book ‘Men Without Women’ by Haruki Murakami, a world renowned Japanese author.
The book was a collection of seven tales, that revolved around the lives of men, who, in their own ways, found themselves alone.
Our design language was inspired by the Japanese aesthetic in all his books. Our illustrations communicated solitude—by not showing people, but showing empty surroundings in the creatives. To create recall, all these scenarios were taken from the stories.
Leading Socio-cultural Conversations
During the auspicious occasion of Navratri, we conceptualised a campaign with the different roles of modern Indian women and showed parallels between them and the goddesses who are worshipped according to ancient Indian scriptures. The idea was also to break stereotypes defined by society that confine women to think, be and do things in a particular way.
This campaign was organically covered by various media platforms, in turn going viral on social media—organically.
Result
The campaign was organically seen by 4,45,000 unique accounts with over 1200 reactions and 2200 shares.
Penguin Petit
The brand wanted to venture into e-reading with some of their most sought-after titles.
Challenge
People were habituated to buying physical books, and e-books hadn’t caught up in India.
Insights
People were not willing to pay the same price for something they couldn’t touch and feel.
While screen-time of readers was increasing, their attention spans were reducing.
Approach
We created a new range of e-shorts known as ‘Penguin Petits’, curated for a young, digital-first audience, who were new to the world of award winning Indian authors.
Each e-book was priced at INR 20 to ensure price wasn’t a barrier to entry.
These were 50-page short stories curated out of some of the most iconic books by Penguin, from authors like Khushwant Singh, Gulzar, Sudha Murthy and more. These were launched on Amazon and Google Books.
Design
The brand wanted an e-short series for ‘The Company of Women’ by Khushwant Singh with each chapter being packaged into a new title.
We brought to life each character and their uniquely erotic personalities through a series of handpainted artwork, that were then used as different book jackets.
Partnerships / Penguin India X Blue Tokai
Blue Tokai is India’s first gourmet coffee roasters bringing freshly roasted coffee beans from Indian farms to people. Marrying two bibliophile favourites—reading and coffee—we designed the packaging for Blue Tokai’s coffee beans with the objective of sending coffee cum book lovers to read Penguin Petits online, through a simple QR code.
Design
The packaging hinted at whimsy along with Indian patterns inspired by the Blue Tokai visual language.
We wanted to bring to life the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans, coupled with the feeling of being transported to a different world while reading.
An Ordinary Life by Nawazuddin Siddiqui
While we worked on positioning and launching diverse authors including Nobel laureates and Global record-breakers, one campaign we worked on that broke the news was ‘An Ordinary Life’ by Nawazuddin Siddiqui (which was later recalled by the author himself).
To build curiosity pre-launch, we developed an ad campaign highlighting Nawazuddin’s bold personality to push Amazon pre-orders.
On-ground, we designed the branding and relevant merchandise for the book.
Our visuals were inspired by some of the most iconic characters Nawaz had played on-screen. We used pencil colours, water-colours and a bit of charcoal to illustrate his raw and rugged on-screen personality that people associated with.
In the book, Nawaz talked a lot about drinking Chai and eating Parle-G biscuits for his meals. That gave birth to the ‘Not an ordinary chai’ kulhads, based on the theme.
The book received a raving response—large number of pre-orders and a block-buster launch—but was withdrawn by the author two days later, due to personal reasons.