Photo credit: Laura-Shimili
The Brief
Midas was appointed by The Folio Society to launch the landmark edition of Shakespeare’s The Complete Plays, marking 400 years since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, arguably the most important book ever published in the English language.
Midas worked to deliver a targeted campaign establishing the release of The Folio Society’s The Complete Plays as a historic publishing moment in 2023, while highlighting the edition as the most important release in the company’s 75-year history of publishing the world’s most beautiful books.
The Work
Midas worked with The Folio Society to deliver an impactful campaign focussed on securing media coverage in top tier media that would engage key audience groups.
Having identified a range of spokespeople who could each talk to different elements of this unique limited edition, with defined talking points for each sector, Midas worked to secure coverage across a range of media segments. This included outreach to national and broadcast media, as well as lifestyle, design, book trade and regional press. Our segmented approach included: pitching for national interviews with The Folio Society CEO to use The Complete Plays as a moment to tell brand story; pitching RSC’s Gregory Doran to broadcast and national media to discuss the historical importance of Shakespeare’s First Folio; offering illustrator Neil Packer to design media; lining up interviews for the wider Folio Society team to discuss the unique production process for The Complete Plays; and hosting a photo call for regional media when the book-binding process began by hand in Leeds.
To celebrate the launch, The Folio Society hosted an event at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Midas managed the press guest list, securing attendance from BBC News, BBC Radio 4 Today, London Evening Standard, Sky News, The Times, Monocle, Reader’s Digest and The Bookseller, as well as a photographer from ALAMY.
The Results
Our campaign delivered coverage across national, broadcast, lifestyle, regional, trade and specialist media, with a potential audience reach of 9 million readers (circulation/MUU).
Coverage highlights included: we supported The Folio Society in telling its unique brand story, with interviews in The Telegraph and Times Radio; we secured diary story coverage in The Times; we placed an interview with Greg Doran on Sky News; we secured extensive features in Creative Review and Readers Digest with Neil Packer and The Folio Society’s Tom Walker each interviewed respectively; a full-page feature ran in Visit England’s BRITAIN magazine; history magazine Best of British covered the release in print; Yorkshire Post ran an extensive behind-the-scenes exclusive on the book-binding process; and both The Bookseller and BookBrunch ran news coverage around the release.