The Versatile Master Artist

Osborne didn’t speak.

He simply watched the resolute Anna for a few seconds before helplessly smiling wryly: "Little Anna, I can’t tell if your persistence and seriousness are your strengths or weaknesses. All I can say is, you’re still the same as when you were a child."

Osborne gently wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin and took out his large-screen Samsung Galaxy phone from his pocket.

He unlocked the screen,

and the cover of The Little Prince immediately came into view.

"This is indeed a work that leaves a deep impression," Osborne thought.

He wasn’t sure if Anna’s assertion was just blind confidence in Detective Cat.

At least one thing Osborne believed the girl might not have been wrong about.

The new illustration of Detective Cat is indeed a charming piece of work.

Especially the magical eyes of the little boy on the dune. When he received the artwork, he instinctively set this Little Prince on the Night Sand Dune as his phone’s cover.

Osborne had received submissions from Charlie’s art department before, but had never felt this way.

Perhaps...

it’s really possible that Miss Ilina was right.

"Well, I’ll take your word for it, Anna."

Osborne licked his lips, feeling quite excited by the girl’s words.

"By the way, speaking of marketing, I have something that might interest you, Anna. You should take a look."

Osborne tapped a few times on his phone and then handed it across the table, "This is our new publication advertisement."

Advertisement?

Anna wiped her fingertips with a wet wipe and took Osborne’s phone.

Marketing is a required subject related to book publishing.

The publishing industry not only emphasizes the notion that "good books will sell," but also that "excellent marketing investment is a prerequisite for the success of a publication."

Combining an excellent text with large-scale exposure strategies can achieve the effect of riding the wind to soar high.

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are all classic cases that must be learned in the book marketing industry.

The latter’s publisher in 1925 used promotional phrases in the New York Times like "A milestone work of the century," "The greatest novel in American history," and "A concentrated imprint of the 20th century era," attracting many people to the stores to choose to buy The Great Gatsby and see for themselves, creating a sales record at the time.

In the past twenty years, the Scholastic Group’s largest book promotional campaign was for the closing work of the Harry Potter main series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, before its entry into the book market.

These included holding various large-scale press conferences, global trial signing events, inviting professional voice actors to read certain plot segments live, and adapting some story episodes into stage plays for small performances at event sites.

The publisher even directly arranged for Ms. J.K. Rowling to appear on top talk shows like The Ellen Show, Today Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, which have millions of viewers.

Just the advertising expenditure in the London Region had to be calculated in millions of pounds. This grand marketing pushed the sales of Deathly Hallows to a horrifically astonishing figure of one hundred million copies.

Anna understood that The Little Prince would not qualify for such massive resource investment by the group.

She didn’t even expect that the project team would have made a professional advertisement for this book.

The video on the phone wasn’t long, roughly about a few dozen seconds.

It only had a few simple shots, but it wasn’t purely a celebrity endorsement book promotion, instead it included a short storyline, the so-called storytelling advertisement.

A story about a crying little girl.

The video that Anna saw on the phone was completed under Director Morgan’s approval by the publisher inviting BBC’s professional advertising team, based on events that happened [in the bookstore].

The directorial team, according to the publisher’s needs, discussed and then simply wrote the script.

He didn’t shoot any additional camera movement shots, directly using different angle shots collected from the monitoring room to retain the genuineness of the live action.

The team flawlessly conveyed the concept of the theme "fairy tales make crying children smile" quickly through professional editing in this advertisement.

To be honest,

the stage design and lighting conditions in the video were not ideal.

Fortunately, the monitoring system in the market-simulated bookstore at Scholastic’s European Headquarters Building is very advanced, just renovated two years ago, enough to see the subtle expressions on shoppers’ faces while shopping, incomparable to road surveillance.

The advertising team performed video quality enhancement and algorithmic frame interpolation related post-production on the surveillance video using film and television software.

The video picture on the phone, highlight dynamics, still differed from the effects of an 8K professional film camera yet better than common cellphone cameras.

It’s usable even for television ads.

Anna didn’t care about the picture quality.

She was pleasantly surprised to find that although the scene of the ad was extremely simple, and the creativity was not novel, all actors’ expressions were indeed genuine.

Especially the moment of the little girl’s facial changes—that naive, innocent, toothless smile easily permeated one’s heart.

Anna watched the ad several times.

She dragged the phone’s progress bar back from the screen’s end, stopped at the Black girl, lingering on the promotional phrase "Scholastic Publishing Group, let children encounter a beautiful world through reading."

"It’s very real. This little girl’s acting is really good, is she a child actor?"

"Child actor? Oh no, this is captured live footage from our Detective Cat and Vellein market research event. I don’t think there’s anything more genuine than this."

Osborne smiled: "The video you saw is 96 seconds long, which will be updated on the group’s official account and YouTube account. Besides, there are two versions, 60 seconds and 30 seconds each, content largely similar yet with different editorial decisions, which will be posted according to advertising expenses on urban rail subways, and various TV shows."

"Directed team’s suggestion—"

Osborne even bent his thumbs and index fingers, making a bracket gesture in front of his chest: "We’ll add a caption at the bottom of the formally posted video as [Advertising content entirely captured from real live scenes. Not screenplay interpretation]. The BBC team thinks the marketing effect will be good."

"That much investment? Buying ads on TV isn’t cheap."

Anna glanced Osborne up and down, her tone filled with gratitude: "I don’t even know what to say."

"No need to thank me. This wasn’t my decision. Just for the two tube stations with over a hundred thousand daily passengers at Stratford and London Bridge, video ads cost 3000 pounds per second. The budget for The Little Prince project group can’t afford expensive TV ads."

Osborne waved his hand: "What you’re seeing is Scholastic Group’s corporate promotional video and Easter book purchase season’s planned advertisement for this year, not The Little Prince’s promotional ad."

The publishing group with a market value of over ten billion US dollars annually produces its corporate promotional video.

During Easter sale season, Christmas holidays, Black Friday and other major western consumption shopping time points, like Dongxia’s Dangdang book season and Double Eleven shopping festival, ads are placed on various media channels promoting shopping.

Director Morgan liked the effect presented by this advertisement a lot.

"I think Director Morgan successfully persuaded the North American board to replace the originally planned promotional video ad, confirming it as this year’s corporate promotional video for the publisher. It mainly promotes Scholastic Group’s children’s book business—"

"And our The Little Prince was lucky enough to hitch a ride."

Anna praised her and Lady Detective Cat’s good fortune in her heart.

The girl felt it wasn’t just luck, but also inevitable; that little girl’s reaction precisely proved Lady Detective Cat’s excellence.

Good luck only allowed the camera to capture such a moment.

"Ride? No, this is not a mere ride but a free rocket," Osborne couldn’t help but show a smile as if hit by a pie.