Not so long ago people were forecasting the death of printed books and ebooks were to take over the world. Whilst reality hasn’t been quite so drastic, brands known predominantly for book publishing, it's had to embrace change to survive.
The birth of smartphones, tablets, AR and VR and constantly evolving and ground-breaking technology has fundamentally changed the way that people consume content. In response, book publishing brands have had to evolve their offering to ensure they are reaching consumers in the right places, giving them the content they want, in an appropriate format.
In terms of maintaining relevance, book publishers must adhere to the same principles as brands from any industry. As Jez Frampton, global chief executive of Interbrand, says: “The best global brands don’t just weather change, they drive it”.
To do this, Frampton argues, brands must look inward and outward, expand into new markets and create better experiences to grow their brands and businesses.
For Guinness World Records, this has meant embracing disruption and recasting our brand strategy to reach and appeal to our audiences in new ways - starting on a journey to evolve from a single bestselling book into a multimedia global entertainment brand, developing new products or services to work alongside our legacy publishing business.
Looking inward
Firstly, we re-evaluated Guinness World Records’ brand identity and our purpose. We asked what Guinness World Records is in the 21st century: the global authority on record breaking and what we mean to our target audience: we inspire people, anyone, anywhere, any culture or country by celebrating the amazing and verifying world class achievements.
This led to us redefining our 'Purpose, Vision, Mission and Values' and sharpening our brand persona. It also helped us identify the potential for new products and markets that we had not even begun to explore.
Looking outward
Data and customer insight helps us to understand our target markets, keep us relevant and enables us to connect and communicate with our target audience, where they want to be and with content that is meaningful to them. This has proved crucial in the creation of exciting, entertaining and more personal customer experiences; firstly helping us expand our legacy publishing range for example, such as our Gamer’s, Blockbusters! and most recently Amazing Animals editions; finding ways of bringing record breaking to our audiences through subjects they are passionate about and love.
Expand into new markets and create better experiences
The next step was to review the Guinness World Records global audience. While we knew how to reach families, who buys our books for seven to 11-year-olds, we needed to attract new audiences, young adults, businesses and agencies looking to engage with consumers in new ways.
The beauty of record breaking is its inclusiveness and adaptability and that once people have been part of this experience they want to share their involvement or achievement. That form of storytelling works equally well in print, video or live formats so we were perfectly placed to capitalise on the latest trends and to create shareable, snackable content that works across multiple platforms including social media networks, resulting in growing following of more than 15.5million fans.
Engaging content and the adaptable, sharable aspect of record breaking has enabled us to work with businesses, brands and agencies putting record breaking at the heart of their marketing, advertising and PR campaigns. It’s also enabled us to launch a portfolio of staff engagement products for conferences and meetings and creating live entertainment programs for the leisure and tourism sectors. Expanding on our TV formats and You Tube success, we are now exploring live streaming, branded games and Guinness World Records attractions to further expand our portfolio of products and services.
So, for Guinness World Records the key has been to explore, understand, grow our brand audience, giving them the opportunity to consume what and when and how they wish, whilst staying true to our brand identity; responding to new trends, shifting lifestyles and rather than fearing technological advancements, embrace them.
By Guinness World Records senior vice president Nadine Causey