Last Book on Earth
Issue 22 | February 2012
Agency
Ogilvy Mexico
Creative Team
VP and Creative Services Directors: Jose Montalvo, Miguel Angel Ruiz; Creative Directors: Agustin Velez, Manuel Vega; Copywriters: Agustin Velez, Manuel Vega; Art Director: Gabriel Martiinez; Digital Creative Director: Carlos Holcombe;
Production Team
Motion: Ricardo Garcia, Julio Alonso; Developers: Adrian Perez, Miguel Garcia; Digital Art Directors: Mario Flores, Jorge Alvite; Digital Copywriter: Gonzalo Fragoso; Client Marketing Manager: Alberto Achar; Agency Producer: Juan Pablo Osio
Other Credits
Account Director: Paola Mayoral; Account Supervisor: Pilar Troconis
Date
Throughout 2011
Background
Gandhi Bookstores wanted to get more people in Mexico thinking about books, not just about reading them but about what they mean. And what better way to do this than by inviting them to become authors themselves?
Idea
The end of the world is a fairly regular topic in newspapers and in online reports. Nostrodamus is only one among many predicting the apocalypse is almost upon us.
The agency took this fascination with armageddon and asked, if the world really is about to end, what should we write as a record of it? What would be the last book on earth?
The idea was that the last book would be written by a lonely survivor living in a refuge near a now-silent Mexico City, once one of the most populated cities in the world.
The plan, of course, was to get people reading as well as writing by inviting them to be a part of this literary adventure. Gandhi Bookstores had permission to be able to get people involved in this way, being well known and much loved in Mexico.
Results
100 stories were written and uploaded to the website within two hours of it going live. All in all, 5,520 stories were contributed to ‘The Last Book On Earth’.
The site has had 21,154 unique visitors and 42,264 page views.
The book that was edited from all the contributions, ‘The Last Book On Earth’, has sold more than 2,000 copies generating revenue of over $500,000 not to mention PR valued at the equivalent to $600,000 advertising spend.
All in a country where, on average, people read fewer than three books a year.
Our Thoughts
One example of publishing and advertising becoming closer bed-fellows was when the celebrated novelist Fay Weldon wrote a novel called “Bulgari”. People paid good money to engage with what was, after all, an ad for the jeweller’s. Now here’s a bookshop getting people to write a book that celebrates the value of books and then buy it. It creates revenue by promoting books in general and by promoting its own book in particular.