The Brief
Midas was hired by Colin D. Ellis to run a marketing campaign for the launch of his new book Detox Your Culture, published by Bloomsbury Business. The aim was for an insightful campaign launch that succeeded in platforming Colin’s expertise in mentoring and guiding organisations toward cultural detoxification. Midas planned a strategic campaign with broad reaching and long-term aims, as well as launch impact, that would encourage conversation around workplace culture from the top down.
To do this we:
- Performed a deep-dive analysis of Colin’s current social media platforms, offering recommendations for content that would successfully translate the key talking points of his new book and encourage new followers.
- Carried out a National Rail and DLR advertising campaign, alongside a targeted digital ad campaign through Business Leader.
- Drove a targeted influencer outreach campaign.
The Work
Social Media Strategy
Midas acted as consultant on Colin’s social media platforms providing an overarching strategy and content plan. Following a kick-off meeting with Colin, Midas audited his social media profiles and podcast, analysing the types of content that were performing well and where there was opportunity for improvement. Collaborating with the Bloomsbury team was also necessary to ensure we were aligning our work with their wider marketing and digital strategy
Following on from the early stages of research, Midas provided Colin with designed assets for use across his social channels as well as suggested content to use weekly in the lead up to and post publication. Both content and assets were produced in line with suggestions from the marketing strategy documents.
Branding & Messaging
Perhaps the most integral aspect of the campaign was in determining our messaging and creating the visual and written communication imperatives – in other words, establishing the campaign ‘brand’. Our primary objective was to develop clear, distinctive messaging to reach three different audience strands through OOH advertising opportunities
The audience was discussed in detail with Colin to ensure Midas’ proposed audience was in line with the client’s own objectives. Following this, Colin was presented with a list of advertising opportunities where it was decided to focus on DLR, National Rail and Business Leader (print and digital). Through this strategy, it was possible to reach a wider range of readers from employees looking for advice on why they feel unhappy at work, to first-time managers or HR representatives, all the way to entrepreneurs and CEO’s.
Midas worked closely with Colin to match the most powerful of four suggested concepts with each advertising opportunity, taking into consideration copy lines, visual approach and audience. Once decided by Colin and the Midas marketing team, freelance designer, Ali Nazarai was sent a detailed brief on visual approaches in line with the selected concepts. All final visuals were also sent to the Bloomsbury team to ensure we were keeping in line with their branding and vision for the book.
Influencer Outreach
In July, Midas began researching a wide range of UK-based influencers that would be suitable for Detox Your Culture. In August a list was curated of influencers who showed similar interests to the themes of the book. Influencers were contacted with an initial pitch and press release and chased a week later if there was no response.
The Results
In line with publication week and those that followed, we had great results with the high-profile consumer marketing campaign that we ran in line with MAG and supported by Ali Nazari’s brilliantly designed assets. In total, the OOH campaign had an estimated reach of 11.7 million. Our aim with the advertising campaign was to ensure we were reaching every segment of Colin’s audience from employee to CEO and the variance of the advertising campaign really supported this.
- The DLR ads ran for a minimum of two weeks from the 9th September with an estimated 1,348,140 impacts targeting business commuting audience
- The National Rail ads ran across 80 stations for a minimum of two weeks from the 26th August, with an estimated 9,928,000 impacts reaching broad book buying audience
- The Business Leader print and online package had a total estimated reach of 469,000 to an audience primarily made up of CEO’s, Tech Entrepreneurs and Business Owners ranging from 35 – 49
- The Business Leader Print ad ran on the weekend of 14th September with an estimated reach of 84,000
- The Business Leader website ads ran on the 13th September and had an estimated reach of 364, 000
- The Business Leader LinkedIn ad was posted on 13th September with an estimated reach of 21,000
The final visuals, branding and messaging were curated based on which audience we were most likely to reach through each strand. With a focus on employees, managers and HR through the DLR and National rail ads and CEO’s and entrepreneurs through the Business Leader ads.
Colin was also sent a detailed breakdown of opportunities for Meta advertising opportunities as previously discussed but chose to focus solely on paid OOH opportunities.
By working closely with Colin and Bloomsbury throughout the branding and messaging period, Midas ensured that the paid advertising campaign was successful in portraying the key themes and takeaways from Detox Your Culture and aligned with everyone’s objectives for the campaign.
We reached out to ten HR influencers on Linkedin, five Wellness influencers on TikTok and 8 Non-Fiction reviewers on Instagram and X. We also reached out to four of Colin’s suggested contacts. We received interest from four influencers who had a combined following of over 50,000 followers, including Linda Hill (social following: 22,000), a well-established book blogger and reviewer for My Weekly. We also had interest from established book blogger JaffaReadsToo (social following: 3,000)
and garnered interest from two established podcasts. Company Culture Podcast (social following: 4,500) and Eat Sleep Repeat. (social following: 63,000)
Our social media rebrand helped to position Colin as an accessible expert on workplace culture across his Instagram and Linkedin platforms.
This campaign was led by Stephen Dumughn and Maddie Dunne Kirby