Company: McCANN PR, Bucharest, Romania
Company Description: McCann PR is a leading Romanian public relations consultancy firm with a 5- year history of developing award- winning campaigns and a portfolio of world-renowned clients. Featured clients: Coca-Cola, Heineken, Cadbury, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Vodafone. McCann PR is part of the McCann Erickson Romania Group and an affiliate member of Weber Shandwick.
Nomination Category: Creative Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Creative Team of the Year

Nomination Title: The Romanian Publishers’ Association and BOOKFEST 2008. Books have answers

Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Outline of the project. Literary and serious reading has been declining
significantly in this period of rising Internet use. Young people prefer to
spend time skating through cyberspace, which offers them entertainment,
information and networking all in one.

It is this segment of dynamic, fickle and inquisitive young people we wanted to
convince to attend BOOKFEST - a rather conservative and didactic book fair,
still largely avoided by people under 30 yo.

The challenge was even tougher as BOOKFEST 2008 was the first edition when
attendance required an entry ticket.

Objective:
-              Create awareness among 50% of Bucharest’s youth within 1 week only and
present a freshened-up Bookfest to 100% of journalists.
-              Make 40% of the young people of Bucharest and 100% of the specialized
media
attend the Bookfest 2008 events.
-              Make 40% of Bucharest’s young people interested in reading print books;

Issue: 80% of young people under 30 yo are not interested in BOOKFEST. 52% of
young Romanians never read books and 28% read very little. Over 53% of Romanian
15-yo teenagers in Romania have poor literacy skills

Insight gained through research.
1.            There are three main reasons people spend time on the internet: to
meet people, for entertainment, to gather information.
2.            There’s a widespread view among young Romanians that “books are for
nerds”

Creative challenge: reading in print is cool and fun and brings you friends.
And BOOKFEST is the ultimate place to look for great books.

Idea: Books have answers.
Strategic approach: We presented modern writers and turned the internet – in
our case the first enemy to reading – into our favor, by using it to spread the
word on BOOKFEST. Moreover, we didn’t advertised BOOKFEST to young people, but
let them voice their own opinions and in this way become ‘writers or
journalists’.

Execution. Online promotion.
www.clubulBOOKFEST.ro (the BOOKFEST Club).
The idea behind a Book Club: there is a right book for each individual and each
need. What do you expect from a book? 6 animated characters represented 6
different literary genres: live the big adventure book/ be a child once again-
book / get rid of inferiority complexes-book / live in the future-book/ have a
good laugh-book / fall in love-book. The site, with insights on how to build
one’s own book club and find the books that meet one’s needs, enabled visitors
to interact on its forum.

VIRUS on the street. We crafted a special book and a special poster (Please
find them attached in the press kit).
500 book copies and 150 posters with several plots (pen inside / hooked) were
distributed downtown, on park benches, in theaters, elevators, train and subway
stations, and in different locations on student campuses (open-air restaurants,
university theatres and lecture rooms, etc.)
 
A press conference was organized for traditional media & KOLs.

The event itself. The BOOKFEST went beyond books to incorporate live music,
movies (screenings of book adaptations), and roundtables with writers and
autograph sessions in the four-day event.

Timeframe. The brief was received on May 12. Campaign start (guerrilla tools) -
May 24. Press conference: June 4. BOOKFEST event in Bucharest: June 4-8.
Agency staff: 2 persons worked pro bono

Results: The number of the website’s unique visitors amounted to 9,000 in four
days. The website was talked about on main Romanian blogs and social networking
sites.

We provided a ROI of 24, reflected in over 100 articles in the national print
and over 220 articles in the online press. Media value: 421,200 Euro.
Budget: 17,000 Euro (including guerrilla - 2,600 Euro and the website - 2,400
Euro).

Business results: Attendance: 60,000 people. One third of the attendees were
people under 30 years old, states The Romanian Publishers’ Association whose
employees were at the entry throughout the fair. Book sales: 600,000 books

List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

ftp://StevieAwards:stevieawds14@ftp.mccann.ro
http://www.clubulbookfest.ro

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of this nominated team:

Andreea Leonte joined McCann PR team early in 2004 and is Account Director in
the Consumer Brand practice leading on food and beverage and other FMCG
clients.

She has 5 years of PR practice, working previously in mass-media as foreign
affairs editor at the national TV station B1TV and editor within national
newspapers and lifestyle magazines, writing news reports, interviews,
investigations, both social  and lifestyle features.

She earned a master degree in marketing communication, at Complutense
University, Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, Madrid, Spain.

The campaigns developed by the Consumer team earned recognition from
international PR leading experts.