Almighty painter

Chapter 253 The Magic of Smile

"Book ad?"

Sakai Katsuko was the first to notice the Scholastic Group logo that flashed on the phone screen.

She said casually: "Gu Jun, have you noticed that more and more publishers and film companies are beginning to adjust their publicity centers to related fields on the Internet. My brother Gang Chang wants to collect a picture of this year's releases. A very good poster of "Slam Dunk" was released as a souvenir, and I ran for several streets to find it."

Major foreign book publishers have their own long-established traditional methods of publicity and distribution.

Common methods range from posting posters on the street to holding reader meetings. Even in the [-]th century when Maupassant and Dumas published books, these methods were already very mature.

Incidentally.

Don't underestimate the illustrations of publishers' posters posted on the street.They have always been a very important trade category for illustration art.

It not only has publicity value, but also has collection value.

Early posters such as Mickey Mouse, Pooh Bear, Tom and Jerry, and Iron Man are available in various pawn shops and flea markets in North America, and many fans are willing to collect them.

The famous Larry Gagosian's art business empire started by reselling illustrations for 50 cents a piece on the balcony of New York's red light district.

And with YouTube, TIKTOK began to occupy the social center of people's lives.

The focus of book publicity and distribution channels has also begun to shift to Internet advertising.

Last year, Barnes & Noble, the largest brick-and-mortar bookstore seller in North America, successfully sold its boring dog-blooded Mary Sue campus love novel "How I Became Beautiful in Summer" to nearly 100 million by relying on the marketing push on TIKTOK. readers' attention.

As a result, it topped the New York Times bestseller list for six consecutive weeks, earned more than [-] million yuan, and was announced by Amazon Streaming Media to buy the copyright and adapt it into a TV series.

Even in book marketing, the term "BOOKTOK" was born specifically.

regardless of book quality.

As long as it can attract enough audiences to discuss on the self-media video platform, which is a battleground for military strategists.

It means success in sales.

"Unfortunately, it may be a commercial innovation, but the promotion of this kind of video is becoming more and more homogeneous, and it is difficult to attract my attention. There is no beautiful and exquisite poster on the street that can attract my interest. .It may not be a good thing for illustrators."

Sakai Katsuko cut a piece of beef and put it in his mouth, not the slightest interest in what was playing on the screen.

Her perception of this online book marketing is somewhat negative.

It was the first time for Ms. Sakai to see the advertisement of the Scholastic Group on Youtube.

But now that the paper publishing industry is so volatile, all major publishers' new books will be pushed desperately on short video websites.

As long as people who are in touch with Twitter and Douyin, it is almost impossible to avoid similar drainage exposure.

Katsuko Sakai has seen many similar advertisements.

All kinds of similar scholars promoted it, and invited a few celebrities such as film and television stars and sports stars to use this book as an endorsement in front of the camera, talking about how much they love this book.

The same script routine changed the title of the book back and forth.

After the initial novelty, people are tired and tired of watching.

Sakai Katsuko is a painter.

In her mind, this way of promoting books on Facebook is not even as meaningful and profound as the colorful illustration posters carefully designed by first-line illustration studios.

Previous publicity illustrations can be preserved for 100 or 200 years.

In the early years, the illustrator drew illustration posters for Hugo's romantic drama "Onani" when it was screened at the Opera de France on February 1830, 2, and it is still meticulously hung in the hall of the Opera House.

And these self-media push ads are just a burning nicotine cigarette in the era of fragmentation.

After the initial numb stimulation, it will be completely forgotten.

The average residence time of them in people's brain is really only the time of one cigarette.

Sakai Katsuko is also not optimistic about the Scholastic group, and what special and innovative promotional works can be shot.

"My Youtube family member account, there are still two shared quotas that no one uses. I will send you an email later, and you can be pulled in by clicking the link. In this way, you can skip these without wasting time in the future. Boring advertising."

Katsuko Sakai suggested while hovering over the screen of Gu Weijing's mobile phone standing by the window with his clean left hand that had not touched the food.

She was going to skip the ad directly after the first ten seconds of mandatory viewing.

talking room,
The trademark of the publishing house has been hidden, and the advertisement has already started to play officially.

Completely beyond the girl's expectations.

No boring promotional messages.

There is also no scene where Katsuko Sakai expected the actress Jennifer Lawrence to sit in a chair, holding Ben Lin Hoover's new book and talking about how to draw the power of women from it (Note).

(Note: This is the most classic book promotion ad template today. Colin Hoover is the most famous TikTok author in the West in 2021 and 2022, with annual sales close to 1 million US dollars. At its peak some time ago, TIktok overseas edition book promotion Two-thirds of the column is devoted to ads for the best-selling queen.)
The first frame is a close-up of a crying little girl.

"Wow……"

All shots are clips of real scenes.

However, due to technical reasons for dubbing, the cries were dubbed by the advertising team later.

The little girl's characteristic aggrieved cry came from the speaker of the mobile phone, which startled Sakai Katsuko and Gu Weijing who were eating.

"What kind of unconventional development is this?"

Sakai Katsuko raised an eyebrow.

In the highly homogenized advertising field, it is completely confusing to put a crying little girl.

But no matter how you say it.

Ms. Sakai, who was waiting to skip the ad, felt a sense of anticipation to continue watching, but was aroused by the opening of this weird ad.

Gu Weijing was picking mussels from the plate just now.

He didn't stare at the screen, he was so startled by the sudden cry of the little girl that he almost put his finger in the still hot sauce.

Gu Weijing's first reaction was that it was the little girl Jasmine who was crying.

He turned his head and saw that sitting next to them, the short Jasmine, who could barely reveal a head and half of her neck, was sitting there upright, burying her head in a stack of white truffle buns.

Only then did he heave a sigh of relief, and complained, "What? A little girl is crying. Is this a book ad or a diaper ad?"

"Jasmine is better than this little friend, she never cries."

Katsuko Sakai patted Jasmine on the head and said with a smile.

After they made such a joke, counting the few breaths at the beginning when the trademark was displayed, ten seconds had already passed.

The [Skip] logo to skip the advertisement has appeared in the lower right corner of the YouTube video.

"Wait a minute, watch it for a few seconds, it seems quite interesting." Sakai Katsuko said to her boyfriend.

She didn't jump right away.

Unsatisfied curiosity is quite uncomfortable.

When people swipe short videos and see a particularly eye-catching title, even if their fingers have inadvertently swiped over this video, they will deliberately go back and watch it.This is the truth.

And Sakai Katsuko is now going to wait to see what happened to this little girl before skipping this ad.

Especially when a line of English explanations appeared in the upper left corner of the ad [the content of this ad is collected from the real world, captured from real scenes, not a plot effect].

Sakai Katsuko's inquisitive mentality of wanting to see what the advertising team was up to was even more seduced.

But the filming team is unwilling to follow the routine.

Advertising is not a lengthy TV series. The point is to be fast, precise and ruthless, and to instill all information into the audience in a very short time.

Just piqued the interest of the audience.

The screen suddenly turned black like a movie trailer without warning, and a line of golden promotional text was quickly inserted——

[This Easter, 130 illustrated collections, 987 popular science books, 3753 books for teenagers and adults, countless eternal text classics, meet you. 】

Then it immediately cuts back to the scene of the little girl.

In the picture at this time, a blonde girl handed a colorful book of fairy tales to a little girl with missing teeth.

The little black girl rubbed her head in her mother's arms, and took the book carefully.

The plot is simple and straightforward, without any dubbing or subtitles, anyone can understand what happened.

It's just that the next few seconds of footage are magic.

As the golden fairy tale book is passed on in the hands of adults and children.

the cry fades away,

gradually returned to silence.

The black girl quietly looked at the illustration cover in her hand.

The sadness between her eyebrows and eyes melted so naturally, dissipating on her cheeks.

There were still light tears on the girl's face.

The last unshed tear still hangs on the lips, but the corners of the eyes have been bent like crescent moons.

glaciers shattered,

Spring blossoms.

If such a dramatic facial expression change is performed by an actor in a stage play, critics will definitely criticize it as excessive force, thinking that the expression is unnatural and the emotion is incoherent.

But when everything is an outpouring of true feelings without a script arrangement.

Then there is only shock in its place.

The smile of a little girl is the most touching image in the world.

It is rooted in the instinct of protecting cubs in human genes. No matter men or women, even the murderers of heinous serial murders, as long as the last trace of humanity in their hearts has not been wiped out, they will be moved by such a smile.

"It's so beautiful."

Sakai Katsuko sighed softly, and she couldn't help showing a motherly expression on her face.

That ignorant, innocent, and heartfelt smile.

Even if McKenna Grace, a professional girl actor and the most famous acting child star of the new generation of Hollywood, is invited to play the role, the performance will not be so natural and unadorned.

It was a refreshing smile that melted Miss Shengzi's heart.

"It's beautiful."

Sakai Katsuko only felt that this smile reminded her of Dante Rossetti's masterpiece "Smiling Little Angel" that she had seen at the Taylor Gallery in London - in that painting, there was a The beam of light hit the face of the girl with flushed cheeks, melting the sadness on the girl's face in the painting, and joy began to emerge from the bottom of her heart.

"I see the kingdom of heaven, I see all the good things in the world, I see the holy light shines everywhere, and I smile from the top of my heart, pure and clean." She murmured softly the religious essay that Rossetti wrote in the corner of the canvas.

In terms of conception, Rossetti's work is actually an apocalypse painting, that is, a work that depicts the so-called "revelation" or records "religious moments".

The very important political task of the early Western painters was to draw this kind of propaganda posters as the mouthpieces and horns of the church.

The creativity of the painting is not too much new.

It simply expresses that no matter how difficult life is, the Heavenly Father loves the world, and when the light from the kingdom of heaven shines down, there will be peace and joy in it.

In the religious paintings of that era, the protagonists of the paintings must of course be white.

Miss Katsuko still felt that the expression on the cheeks of the black girl in front of her was so similar to the protagonist of the religious revelation painting.

The smile comes from the heart, clean and dust-free, this description is extremely appropriate at this moment and here.

Fairy tale books are the inspiration for children.

The kind of child who sees the beauty of art, the fascination and happiness in the eyebrows and eyes.

No matter how many times you see a painter like Katsuko Sakai, you can never get enough of it.

"Gu Jun, this smile is so cute. If one day, I can draw a picture that makes a child smile like this, it must be one of the most meaningful works in my life."

Sakai Katsuko said while holding his heart.

Gu Weijing didn't answer. From the moment the blonde girl took out the fairy tale book, he looked a little weird, and he was looking at the screen without saying a word.

On the other hand, the little girl Jasmine who was busy stuffing French ham buns the size of finger potatoes into her mouth was also attracted by the close-up of this smile.

She blinked and asked curiously, "Sister, what is the book that girl is holding?"

Hear Jasmine's question.

Sakai Katsuko wanted to pause the picture and save this smile as a painting material on the phone.

She is also very curious about the title of this fairy tale book that makes a little girl cry into a smile.

Which children's picture book is it, and what kind of cover illustrations should be drawn to achieve such an effect?
Is Jane Arnold back with the Scholastic Group for a new book?

Or there is nothing special about fairy tale books.

Is it just a coincidence that the right time, location, and people are in harmony to impress this little friend?

Sakai Katsuko pressed the screen and found that there was no pause.Instead, it jumped to the Scholastic Group's promotional homepage on Amazon, and suddenly realized that this was an ad that could not be paused.

Sakai Katsuko quickly returned to the page, wanting to press the volume and menu keys at the same time to take a screenshot of the screen.

Regrettably.

At this moment, the advertisement turned black again and entered a new slogan.

[Scholastic Publishing Group, let children meet the beautiful world in reading. 】

The live-action feature film about the little black girl ends.

After turning on again, the screen began to show the only shot in the commercial film synthesized by computer special effects.

In a huge bookstore.

The video camera quickly advances on the shelves, and every book in the camera is a classic bibliography produced by the Scholastic Group.

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", "The Miracle of Oz", "The Train Bazaar", "Memoirs of the Second World War"...

Numerous well-known literary IPs passed in front of the camera.

The camera flashed faster and faster.

At the beginning, you can still see the book cover with all beards and tails.In the end, there was only a vague shadow.Until the last picture stayed on the cover of the book in the little girl's hand.

"This is..." Sakai Katsuko opened his eyes wide, trying to read the name of the book, and muttered to himself.

The advertisement shot paused for a short while, then sank instantly, submerging into the cover of the book.

Let the golden beach in the illustration occupy every corner of the screen.

The previous promotional slogans were all gold letters on a black background, but at this time the advertising team cleverly reversed them and turned them into black letters written on a golden desert, leaving a deeper impression on the audience.

[Easter book season, Scholastic Group's main title, listed on March [-]th. 】

[All major book dealers and Amazon e-commerce platforms sell them. 】

【With you, see you soon! 】

Exactly 30 seconds from time to time, the advertisement officially ends.

Begin to officially enter the body of the YouTube video.

"Wait, the shocking listing? Hey, what's the matter with the shocking listing? Why didn't you even mention the title of the book, and deliberately blurred it out, damn it."

Sakai Katsuko still doesn't remember that she originally wanted to skip the commercial.

Seeing that the promotional video of the Scholastic Group ended in such an endless manner, she felt a great sense of loss in her heart.

"Crack!"

Ms. Shengzi paused the main content of the video that had just started playing.

"Which team designed this advertisement?" She complained helplessly.

It seems that the advertising team is specially trying to arouse people's curiosity, and then say "If you want to know, I won't tell you".

The close-up of the fairy tale book in the little girl's hand just now stayed in front of the camera for less than half a second.

The advertising team also put a layer of frosted filter on the lens very cheaply, so it is impossible to see the specific content and text clearly.

Sakai Katsuko could only vaguely feel from his hazy impression that it should be a very delicately designed illustration.

However, it just made her unable to see the specific content.

The ad sets up all the vibes.

In the end, only one listing time was suddenly announced, allowing the audience to wait in anticipation.

So cheap!
To put it bluntly, this is actually a typical method of shaping "mysterious gimmicks" in advertising psychology.

The rich and powerful film industry does not use this method much, and it is more used by some technology manufacturers or fashion show announcements.

Similar to a few months before the press conference of a major manufacturer, various technology KOLs frequently released rumors about what "epoch-making ruthless products" the factory will produce by then.

Or every year before the E[-] game show, there will also be rumors that a certain manufacturer will produce a brand new [-]A game IP and so on.

The advantage of this method is to gain more attention with the same publicity cost.

Mystery can be contagious like a virus. Everyone's curiosity is passed on from person to person, and non-target groups who are not interested in this field can also be aroused.

The disadvantage is that when everyone becomes curious, they take off their pants, and you pretend to be mysterious.

If the quality of the final product fails to achieve the desired effect, it will immediately arouse rebellion.

Products that could barely reach the passing line, under this kind of marketing style, once the audience's sense of expectation was raised, they were not released in the end.

Absolutely can't escape the scolding and bad reviews.

Advertisement adopts this method, which is also the common result of multiple considerations by the publishing house.

The budget for this commercial was $360 million.

It is not comparable to the marketing budget of hundreds of millions of dollars for a large-scale production film, and it is also far from the group's global warm-up battle for the publication of Ms. Rowling's last two Harry Potter books, "Half-Blood Prince" and "Deathly Hallows".

No matter how classic the IP "The Little Prince" is, it can only be regarded as an old favorite.

Accountants in the finance department are not idiots.

Each book is priced at £20. Even if the first batch of 30 copies are sold out this year, the estimated total revenue is only £600 million.

Not counting inflation in the next 20 years, a total sales of 3000 million pounds is already one of the ten thousandth success stories in the book market.

The original marketing budget of "The Little Prince" was only 40 U.S. dollars. Dean Hawke of Oxford University was invited to hold more than a dozen reader meetings, signing sessions, and frugal bookstores in several major countries in the English-speaking area. Some $30 would barely do the trick.

Spend the remaining $[-] on a few trendy book podcasts, hire a book reporter to write two articles, and you're done.

This $360 million advertising budget is not the "Little Prince" project team, but the advertising budget of the entire publishing house's Easter book season.

The board of directors can give the little prince a free ride. If the main boss blatantly promotes a certain sub-project of the group, other parallel project teams will rebel.

Secondly, Osborne is also very confident in the quality of the book "The Little Prince", so after communicating with the advertising team, he decided on this kind of publicity plan.

It was not revealed what the title book would be.

Just let readers guess for themselves, think for themselves, and go to online discussion groups to discuss.

People who are seduced by curiosity go to such lengths to find out for themselves.

Finally, when the book is on the market, I can't restrain the urge to buy a copy, right?
The 30-second ad on YouTube should have met Osborne's expectations.

It might have been a little too good, but with the help of the black girl in her true colors.Even Katsuko Sakai, who is so gentle and peaceful, felt itchy like a cat scratching her heart.

How was she going to find it?
Sakai Katsuko couldn't help but turn on her mobile phone, open the Google browser, and enter related keywords such as "Scholastic Group, Easter Book Season".

A large number of Lenovo entries automatically popped up on the browser——

【What is the main title of Scholastic Easter book season? 】

[Excuse me, what is the new book that Scholastic Group will launch on March 3? 】

[In the Scholastic advertising video, what is the fairy tale book that the little girl laughed out of? 】

……

Quite a few questions about these keywords were captured by the backend of Google Chrome because they were input by different users many times.

The girl just finished typing the English letters of the word Scholastic, and there are already a lot of related question entries below.

Katsuko Sakai was definitely not the only one who noticed the mysterious gimmick in the ad and was aroused by it.

"You don't need to look it up, I know it's The Little Prince."

(End of this chapter)