Midas has been nominated for the prestigious PRCA’s National Awards’ Digital and New Media Award for the World Book Night campaign, the annual celebration of books and reading, organised by The Reading Agency (TRA).
On 23 March, four weeks before World Book Night (WBN), the UK went into lockdown due to COVID-19. Midas responded quickly to adapt the focus of the campaign to a virtual celebration of books and reading, to go beyond the WBN 2020 booklist and exploit the potential of digital and new media.
Midas worked with TRA to come up with creative solutions to the challenges posed by the pandemic and limitations of lockdown, turning potential obstacles (impossibility of physical events, people forced to stay at home, Covid-dominated news agenda) into advantages, coming up with brand new campaign strands and ideas to achieve the overall objectives. This included prominent use of digital media, the “Reading Hour”, virtual events, key partnerships (including the BBC), a news-worthy survey and celebrity engagement.
The campaign achieved national reach, and brought thousands of people across the nation together virtually to celebrate WBN in lockdown – promoting the 2020 booklist and beyond.
WBN got a social media reach of over 14 million (the main tweet had a potential reach of 1.7million, with 432 retweets), 2,928 new followers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, 356% increase in website users on WBN 23 April 2020 (compared to 2019). On Twitter, #ReadingHour got 26.6 million potential impressions and trended in the UK at #4 on WBN. PR included over 300 pieces of coverage and over 122 broadcast mentions.
The PRCA winners will be announced 10 November 2020.
World Book Night (WBN) is the annual celebration of books and reading taking place on 23 April, organised by The Reading Agency. Events up and down the country run by individuals and organisations celebrate the difference that reading makes to people’s lives, with a focus on non-readers and lapsed readers. On the day, 50,000 books from the WBN booklist are given away to charities, prisons, care homes, youth centres and more.
