Stationery Icons, a 304-page illustrated hardback by Christopher Leonard-Morgan, has launched its first Christmas campaign, positioning the book as a distinctive gift for stationery enthusiasts, collectors and design lovers. The title brings together the stories of 100 stationery brands, and the campaign is its first concerted push for the festive gifting market.
Produced as a premium illustrated title, the book is aimed at readers who collect stationery, follow its brands or take a close interest in design. Its subject is the stationery trade itself: the brands, the personalities behind them and the stories that have sustained them.
Advertising and social promotion
Running through to Christmas, the campaign combines advertising on StationeryNews.net and PGBuzz.net with promotional activity across Instagram and LinkedIn. According to the announcement, the activity celebrates the brands, personalities and stories that make stationery an enduring fascination.
Early sales signal at two London events
The campaign follows sales at two London events. Open House at Stationers' Hall on 20 September and the London Pen Show in Hammersmith on 10-11 October were both described as encouraging for the title, with customers buying copies for friends, family and fellow stationery enthusiasts. Both events, the announcement states, highlighted the book's appeal as a present, and both were recent outings for the title ahead of the festive campaign.
Leonard-Morgan said what had been particularly encouraging was how many people saw the book as a present for someone else. Everyone knows someone who has a favourite fountain pen, treasures a particular notebook or simply cannot resist a stationery shop, he said, and Stationery Icons brings together the stories behind the brands those readers love in a book they can enjoy and return to for years to come.
Featured brands invited to take part
The Christmas campaign invites the 100 featured brands to celebrate their inclusion through their own social-media channels and customer communications, an arrangement intended to extend awareness of the book among stationery enthusiasts around the world. The invitation extends to the full list of 100 brands featured in the book.
Richard Webb, Publisher at Narrative Media, said stationery inspires a remarkable degree of affection and loyalty. He described the extraordinary breadth of stories the book brings together, spanning six centuries of ingenuity, entrepreneurship and design, as what makes it particularly special, and said the publisher was pleased to give featured brands an opportunity to share their own stories with customers and followers, building on the wider interest generated by the campaign.
Print run and price
The first edition has an initial print run of just 1,000 copies. Priced at £80, the premium illustrated hardback is available to order directly from the book's own website.