Exciting updates to the marketing and publicity plan for Dracula: The Un-Dead!!!

Marketing and Publicity at Penguin Group Canada have put together a blockbuster campaign for this exciting, historic publication!

Dracula: The Un-Dead – Penguin Group Canada Marketing and Publicity Plan Partnership with Canadian Blood Services, Yorkdale Mall, and the Randolph Academy for the Performing Arts:

October 18, Toronto: With the help of Randolph’s dance academy, Penguin will stage a public performance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” at Yorkdale, one of Toronto’s busiest malls, and record it forviral distribution on YouTube. The dance will be accompanied by a live, 12-person band, performing “Thriller.”

The performance of “Thriller” will draw attention to the Dracula-themed blood drive we will set up at Yorkdale, in partnership with Canadian Blood Services.

We will hand out Dracula business cards, drawing people to buy the book, and to attend the author event.

Author tour to Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto

October 25, Ottawa: Dacre will give an audio-visual presentation on Dracula, the Stoker family, and The Un-Dead at the Ottawa international Writer’s Festival, with members of the Canadian Stoker family in the audience. A blood drive with Canadian Blood Services will be incorporated into this event.

October 26, Montreal: In Dacre Stoker’s hometown – working with Paragraphe Books to do a second staged reading of The Un-Dead.

October 27, Toronto: A day of national media in Toronto and a private launch for booksellers, Dracula scholars, and the Stoker family, most likely at the richly thematic home of Bill Jamison, complete with mummy and shrunken heads.

October 28, Toronto: More media, and a public event that evening: A staged reading of Dracula: The Un-Dead at the gothically historic Bathurst Street Theatre, to commemorate similar readings given by Bram Stoker in 1897, upon publication of Dracula. The Theatre will place posters in their marquis for the month of October.

Throughout October and November, across Canada: Canadian Blood Services is eager to work with Penguin to create authorless events across the country: more Un-Dead themed blood drives to draw traffic into bookstores.

MARKETING:

Dracula blad

Advance reading copies mailing with readers response card

Outdoor advertising in Toronto for the month of October

National advertising TBC

Dracula: The Un-Dead business cards (with book and Toronto event info)

Dracula: The Un-Dead posters (for in store displays and for the Bathurst Street Theatre)

Street team promotion during the Nuit Blanche in Toronto, October 3^rd

Promotional material for Nuit Blanche

Promotional material for cross-promotion with Canadian Blood Services

Contesting with Canadian Blood Services

Online Marketing and Promotion

Pre-publication trailer for use on social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr

Pre-publication e-cards highlighting bookseller endorsements and reviews from general consumers

Outreach to Penguin’s Twitter followers with contest offerings including tickets to events

Online promotion through Canadian Blood Services website / newsletter (pending partnership details)

Hero banner placement on Penguin.ca, Amazon.ca and ChaptersIndigo.ca

Featured placement in Penguin e-newsletters

Dedicated book and author feature on Penguin.ca

Solicit and link to independent Blogger reviews, generated online viral buzz

Print / mobile integrated campaign with use of ScanLife application to link to online features, interview, excerpts, etc.

Recording of an author video (possibly an event video) as part of Editor Insights on PenguinTV, a newly branded online channel on Penguin.ca

Babs says:

Dracula: The Un- Dead is an exciting gothic adventure. Owing to the exhaustive research of the authors, it is truly deserving of its status as the official Stoker sequel to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Well-loved characters are deftly “resurrected” and some new ones are introduced whom Bram described in his original notes, but cut from the final book. One dark presence, the Countess Bathory, is drawn straight from the pages of history, as terrifying and beautiful a character as can be imagined.

The story soars across destinations in Europe, via one of the first-documented long-distance airplane flights, via great ships and trains. It dips into the world of theatre, the competitive landscape of publishing and stars such as Oscar Wilde, and the burgeoning field of police detective-work. Carefully plotted and researched, it draws you into its mystery, and asks an impossible question: what is the true nature of evil? It is stylish and sexy and violent all at once.

Deb says:

A quick note to say that I’m about 200pages into Dracula: The Un-dead and am loving it! Dacre and Ian have truly captured the dark thrill and moody environment of the original Dracula. I’m finding too that The Un-dead is also true to the original characters: So here we find the weak-willed and snivelling Jonathan Harker 25 years on, an alcoholic and broken man, and Mina his loving wife whose heart and mind belong to a different time and place. And all of this against the backdrop of the dark and dangerous world of Victorian England.

And the new characters are fantastic! Inspector Cotford based on notes that Bram Stoker left…amazing! He is so gripping as the detective haunted by the Jack the Ripper murders who has now stumbled upon an even darker criminal that he could never have imagined….what can I say, I love him!

Visit the Dracula the Un-Dead website.