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World Book Day to revamp for 2012

07.11.11 | Lisa Campbell

World Book Day is set for a 2012 revamp, with new management, branding and digital promotional ideas hoping to achieve more than one million book token redemptions.

WBD will return on 1st March 2012—led by children’s marketing specialist Kirsten Grant as its new director and Penguin’s Joanna Prior as chair—with a new push after what Prior described as a “loss of energy for redemptions” which were not getting children “excited enough”.

The 16-strong management team contains some new members, such as Waterstone’s Fiona Allen, and will focus on targeting teenagers through the creation of a new app, featuring digital-only downloads by Anthony Horowitz, Charlie Higson and Malorie Blackman, among others.

It will hold the first UK-wide Online Festival, which is expected to take place on London’s Southbank. It will involve around 1,000 guests listening to authors speak, while it is streamed live to thousands of children in schools, libraries and bookshops. Celebrity patrons include pop star Peter Andre and author Michael Morpurgo. In 2012, WBD will work with the Publishers Association to increase political engagement through the government’s Reading For Pleasure agenda.

Grant said: “World Book Day is something we should be fantastically proud of as an industry. It has made a big impact, but you can take that for granted. We all felt we needed to renew it this year and bring a fresh pair of eyes to the event. With the changing landscape of children’s books over the last few years, we wanted to make sure we moved with those children.”

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