Digital agency Naked Penguin Boy was commissioned by Harper Collins Publishers to create an online viral campaign as part of their online PR work for the nationwide release of The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross.
The Blue Zone microsite consists of a game, a competition and more information about both the book and the author. The game, titled ‘Capture Kate’, is based on the core plot which tells the story of a family forced into the Witness Protection Program and a young woman’s perilous quest to uncover the dark secrets of her father’s past.
The objective of the game is for users to place their men in formation around the playing board so as to completely surround Kate, capturing her.
The microsite was created to provide in order to provide a centralised platform where community marketing could be directed to from global markets. This gave the target audience an opportunity to engage with the book and its narrative on a more interactive level, and find out more about the novel and creator quickly and easily.
The game was promoted through advertising on Living TV in an effort to support the online PR campaign. Capture Kate was seeded across various community websites up to two weeks before the novel launch and also during the month after release, so as to drive traffic to the Blue Zone microsite.
Digital PR served to extend this activity with competitions, reviews and news features being featured across websites with a predominantly female skew. Homepage coverage and newsletter inclusion were included wherever possible in order to maximise exposure and increase purchase potential.