Pregnancy Test Suspense Sells Harlequin Book

Pregnant? Who Cares.

Writing in the New York Observer, Gabriel Sherman points out an ad in the current issue of Glamour for Ontario based publisher Harlequin who is promoting the new Vicki Hinze Silhouette Bombshell book Body Double. The ad shows a woman from the back sitting on a toilet with a pregnancy test in her right hand and the book Body Double in her left. The ad's tagline reads, "Silhouette Bombshell. No suspense like it." The woman is so entranced by the book she finds the results of her pregnancy unimportant. This is certainly a unique approach to selling a book as most publisher ads feature boring, angled cover shots of the book along with a collection of adoring quotes.

Harliquin Marketing Director Anita Sultmanis explains the strategy. "We wanted to launch a new line of books and, as we were doing that, we wanted to leverage the most appealing aspects of the series, which is suspense. That's what the ads do. The [pregnancy-test] ads tap into the most suspenseful moment of women's life. To show Silhouette Bombshell is suspenseful, we stacked it up to a suspenseful moment women can identify with."

Other ads in the campaign depict equally suspensful moments such as a woman sitting in front of her television holding a lottery ticket in one hand, the book in the other as the results display on the screen.

As in the toilet ad, she can't take her eys off the book to see if she has won the $26 million prize. The campaign was created by Toronto based Zig and will include a $2 million media spend in magazines such as Lucky, Cosmopolitan and People. Click the image to see the full sized ad.

Written by Steve Hall    Comments (0)     Oct-21-04