Guerrilla Marketing for Empört Euch

When publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage put out Empört Euch!, a German translation of Stepháne Hessel's Indignez Vous!, it decided that the book called for no ordinary marketing campaign.

"The book is a pamphlet calling for people to revolt against unfair situations in our daily life and society, e.g. against worldwide hunger, oppression of minorities, ecological damage," says Antonia Besse, head of marketing at Ullstein. Hessel, a 93-year-old French diplomat, was active in the French resistance and one of the original signers of the Universal Charter of Human Rights in 1948. Indignez Vous! was originally printed in France with 6,000 copies in October 2010, but by the end of the year, 600,000 had been sold. The English title is Time for Outrage.

What Ullstein decided on was a bit of guerrilla marketing. "We looked for something intelligent that would be in line with the book's content," says Besse. "Empört Euch's message is to stand up and do something. And so we thought we should find a way to bring this message to as many people of the target group as possible, and be as 'outraged' too," she says.

What Ullstein did was drive around in a van with a computer and project huge multi-storey images of the book on buildings throughout Berlin. "The timing was perfect since it was during the Berlinale, Germany's international film festival, which started last week, and there were a lot of interesting people around," says Besse.

Among the prominent Berlin spots hit during the campaign were Kurfürstendamm, the Gedächtniskirche, Potsdamer Platz, the Philharmonic and Leipziger Straße, all chosen because the target group - well-educated, high-salaried, middle-aged - would be in high numbers in those areas.

"We didn't have permission to do it," says Besse. "That was part of the fun. It was a real guerilla marketing attention kind of thing."

As for the reaction of the public? "Attention. Interest. Recognition. Publicity," says Besse. And the book was the No. 1 top seller for this week at Ullstein.

To get a taste of the campaign, check out a short video on Ullstein's Youtube channel, here.