Seth Godin; instigator, entrepreneur and ruckus-maker returned to London on the 17th January to present his new book, The Icarus Deception, including a reading and a Q&A, at the Mermaid Theatre. The iconic publishing brand Penguin who published Seth’s book engaged us to devise an original and remarkable way to allow audience members on the night to gift a copy of the book and share ideas in social media.
So we worked with Penguin to create a web-based mobile application to do just that.
The premise was simple – each member of the audience would be allowed to gift a copy of The Icarus Deception to two people they find inspiring by choosing two people they are following on Twitter and send a personal message directly to them.
Here’s how it works…
Audience members were given a unique code and url to access the app on their mobile or tablet.
The app works with Twitter’s API, so users were asked to login via Twitter to send their gift. Users were then asked to select someone they’re following.
Then a personalised photo tweet is created using the recipient’s username and The Icarus Deception cover…
And the photo tweet and copy are sent to the recipient on Twitter…
Then a photo tweet is created and sent to the lucky recipient…
To claim their free book, users are sent to a redemption page where they have to verify their Twitter account…
And input their details for postage…
And finally, they can send a tweet back as a thank-you for the free book…
Seth himself even took the audience through how to use the app live on stage…
It was a great moment as the buzz filled the room, whilst the audience reached for their phones to start gifting the book, and the live social marketing experiment was in full flow. We even heard Seth remarking the app was ‘brave & fascinating‘… which made our day.