Live tweeting of Philippa Gregory’s new novel ended on 17th August. To coincide with the book’s international publication date, the following day we put live a bespoke Flash application on Philippa’s website that allows fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure.
As mentioned in a previous post, we have been helping Philippa Gregory and her team with the launch of her latest novel on Twitter.
The first phase of the project has been the release of the c.250 tweets over the seven days leading up to the global publication date for the novel on August 18. At the time of writing this post, the final installment of tweets is due to be released from 5pm GMT this evening. The tweets have been published via the Twitter api using a specially written php/MYSQL broadcast system.
The project has attracted the best part of 600 followers who, based on their spontaneous reactions, have largely enjoyed the experience. Here, in the form of a status update picture essay, is a representative, warts-and-all sample of the @messages that have been sent to Elizabeth Woodville – the main protagonist in the book and the source of the White Queen tweets.
Elizabeth’s opening tweet…
Almost immediately fans comment on, and engage with, what is seen to be the “racy” nature of the tweets…
With roughly 33 tweets going out each day, the frequency of posting was not to everyone’s taste. Such a reaction was probably inevitable and, to be honest, we saw less of this kind of reaction than we had expected…
Some people clearly became actively engaged with the Twitter persona of Ms. Woodville…
Some started to question the point of the exercise – isn’t this giving away the plot?
But such responses were in the minority…
The dust has yet to settle on this project, and Phase 2 kicks off tomorrow (18th) with the addition of a bespoke Flash application to the Philippa Gregory site. This application will allow fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure in a more user-friendly environment than that provided by Twitter itself. We’ve learned a lot already from this project that will hopefully be applied to further experiments in the future.
We have recently launched the IRN-BRU Can Clan site.
Can Clan is IRN-BRU’s take on the 2009 Homecoming celebrations. The Can Clan will gather at Glasgow Green on September 13th to make an attempt on the Guinness World Record for the highest numer of people simultaneously performing the cancan – Can Clan / cancan geddit? There will also be a free mini music festival with a couple of exciting acts that will be announced later this month.
The role of the microsite is to support and promote the Can Clan event, and it features the world’s largest virtual cancan. Anyone can join this virtual cancan by creating their own “BRUZER” – as nearly 400 people have done at the time of writing.
The site is fully wired for social media showing and telling via all the usual channels and mechanics, and you can create your own group or mini-clan. The BRUZERS are fully portable as avatars and widgets.
It’s good to see the brand creating something original and of value to its drinkers as part of Homecoming rather than just jumping on the bandwagon like certain other soft drinks brands we could mention…
We’ve been working with Philippa Gregory (author of The Other Boleyn Girl) and her publisher, Simon and Schuster, on a pioneering project to launch her new novel in Twitter format. This is a first for an international bestselling author of Philippa’s stature. She has reinterpreted the novel as a series of roughly 250 tweets from the book’s main character.
Elizabeth Woodville is The White Queen. Born originally into the House of Lancaster, she seduces and marries the Yorkist King Edward IV. Having risen to royal status by virtue of her beauty she has to use her guile, and the odd bit of witchcraft, to rise to the challenges presented by her precarious position.
Or, in Philippa’s words…
As the examples below demonstrate, what she has to say goes some way beyond the what-I-had-for-breakfast banality that characterises some Twitter exchanges.
If my mother were not a witch, and the descendant of the goddess Melusina, I think none of this could ever have happened to me. But it did.
It has to be secret. His friends have a wedding planned for him and I am a nobody. We marry in secret and we bed in a hurry. I adore him.
At dawn Edward’s army rises from mist, like an army of ghosts, and charges up the slopes to Warwick’s army of Lancaster to vicious fighting.
George, the fool, chooses a fool’s death. He wants to be drowned in a barrel of wine: in his chamber at the Tower.
The project has presented creative challenges to the author and some practical challenges to us in executing the idea. This is Philippa Gregory talking about adapting tens of thousands of carefully crafted words of prose into the 140 character format of Twitter…
“Tweets are a discipline, rather like a haiku, and the shortness of the sentence gives each one a rhythm which is really interesting for prose.
“It was more like writing poetry than prose. And some of the tweets seem to me to be more arresting than the prose of the book. I especially like the first one…
If my mother were not a witch, and the descendant of the goddess Melusina, I think none of this could ever have happened to me. But it did.
“I like this so much, I have re-used it when describing the novel, it doesn’t appear in the novel but only in the Twitter version, but it encapsulates for me the mood of the novel, its dreamlike quality, the character of the heroine and invites you to read more. I am certainly going to write creative tweets again.”
So much for the creative challenges and opportunities. Blonde has been charged with making the project happen in practical terms. And this is by no means a trivial exercise.
Clearly Twitter afficionados will want to follow the project on Twitter, or their Twitter client of choice. But Twitter is an inherently noisy channel and maintaining the narrative thread in amongst tweets from everyone else that the reader is following isn’t easy. Also anyone coming to Elizabeth’s profile mid-way through, or after, the event will be presented with the tweets in reverse order – i.e. the latest tweet first – and back to front isn’t the best way to read a novel, whatever its format. So, whilst launching the novel on Twitter is incredibly of-the-moment, Twitter itself isn’t necessarily the ideal channel from a user perspective in which to follow 250 consecutive 140 character episodes.
This is why the project is being implemented in two stages.
Fans will be able to follow @ElizWoodville on Twitter between 11th & 17th August. The tweets will be posted between 17.00 and 20.00 GMT each day, a window that is designed to make the content accessible to both UK and US audiences.
Then, on August 18th, the global publication date for the book, a bespoke Flash application will be launched on the Philippa Gregory website. The application will provide a rich, immersive experience which will allow users to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure. The above visual is a snapshot from the application.
At the time of writing we’re working with the publisher to seed the project to various communities – fans of Philippa Gregory, the publishing industry and the digital/social media scene. The hope is that the Twitter experiment will introduce new readers to Philippa, but already there is evidence of Philippa introducing new people to Twitter.
Watch this space for further learning once the project goes live.
We’ve been members of CreativeBrief* for a while now, but yesterday we finally got round to publishing our agency showcase on the CreativeBrief site. Apparently this should significantly increase the number of potential clients that have a gander at us. Here’s hoping.
The main navigation for these showcases is fixed for all agencies, and they act as a sort of hybrid between a website and a credentials presentation.
We’re collating initial feedback at the moment so treat this as a public beta test at the moment.
*CreativeBrief may not describe themselves like this, but to us they’re a new business referral agency. Clients use them to condense and keep confidential the process of drawing up shortlists of suppliers for the provision of a range of marketing services.