Republic World News / Prayers for the Assassin

Prayers for the Assassin is a geopolitical thriller by Robert Ferrigno. The novel?s provocative pretext - The Islamic States of America - caught the interest of the world's most prestigious publisher, Simon & Schuster.

Prayers for the Assassin is set in the year 2040 in which United States has become a moderate Islamic Republic after a complex chain of events rooted in today's headlines. After a cross departmental brainstorming session, Simon & Schuster determined that an unprecedented online campaign to augment their traditional marketing tactics was needed.

The Challenge

Simon & Schuster challenged LevelTen to create an online marketing concept that would match the enormous scope and vivid imagination of the novel.

The Solution

LevelTen developed a complex strategy that involved three websites, an advanced online game and sweepstakes, an author's Blog, discussion forums, and dozens of buzz marketing accelerators.

LevelTen built the pre-launch site in just a few weeks. The site was built around the author's Blog and an outreach effort invited hundreds of A-list Bloggers to register for advanced reader editions of the novel.

Two months, ten thousand visitors, and over two thousand information requests later, the main promotion launched featuring two websites: PrayersForTheAssassin.com and RepublicWorldNews.com.

PrayersForTheAssassin.com is the informational site for the book containing the author's Blog, audio book excerpts, and an order online page.

RepublicWorldNews.com (RWN) is where the real fun begins. RWN is an intricate alternate reality news portal set in the futuristic world of the novel. A hundred fictional news articles were crafted based on interesting modern events to spark visitor discussion. Forums were added for people to discuss articles and play "what if" scenarios. The site featured an advanced sweepstakes and game where visitors could sign-up to run for President-for-Life. Candidates won votes by making daily decisions based on news articles and raising funds through copy and paste online banners. Advanced RSS feeds, email to friend, link to us, personalized contribution links and more were created to maximize the buzz reach.

In addition to the extensive Blogger outreach campaign during the pre-launch, dozens of buzz accelerator tactics were used during the promotion to maximize word-of-mouse for the site.

The Results

The promotion firmly demonstrated the power of social promotions on the web. By the end of the ten week promotion, the sites generated over 50,000 unique visitors from over 600 websites, blogs, and forums including CNN, The National Review, Seattle Times, Click Z, and numerous A-list bloggers. The two sites generated over 9,000 inbound links from other websites,2 and "Prayers for The Assassin" and "Republic World News" were mentioned on over 66,000 web pages 2.

All with less than $100 spent on traditional online ads.

The quality of visitors and interest level was extraordinary; users averaged over five page hits and five minutes per visit. In all, over 4,000 hours of direct brand interaction was generated by the promotion.

Prayers for The Assassin made the Los Angeles Times best seller and New York Times extended best seller lists, a first for author Robert Ferrigno. The novel achieved a top 20 ranking on Amazon.com's literature and fiction top sellers list.

Two months after the end of the official promotion effort and with no active marketing, traffic is still significant with the sites projected to generate over 100,000 total visitors by the time the paperback comes out at the end of 2006.

More:
Webby Honoree

Buzz, Balls & Hype's review of the campaign (Caution! Strong blog style language)