Like many other articles on this site, the title is mildly misleading. Don't get me wrong - it's an article about how sales can be boosted by having good, clean, and theme-driven design + be something that any self-respecting business owner should consider a real and researched expense. The title is there to convince you reading this will improve your business/life/writing career, but it is a headline based off of mildly biased, semi-thoroughly researched analysis with a self-serving intention. If you're still interested, read on.
(My thoughts are bold, italic, and large)
The following is from reddit's
/r/SmallBusiness subforum
Original post by /u/TransitionMarketing:
This screen shot
depicts the overall sales of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice based on
five different cover designs and spanning 20 years. This provides a
clear look at the power behind design, marketing and understanding the
current market.
Have a look at the screen shot.
Sales for this literary classic hit a small peak of sorts in 1995,
but overall remained fairly low until 2009 when it surged in popularity
netting more than double the sales in a single year.
Why? What happened in 2009?
The Great Pride & Prejudice Surge Of 2009
The Pride & Prejudice film was released in 2005. Which means that
this probably did not factor largely in to the 2009 releases success.
If anything one would have expected a surge in sales to occur within the
next year (2006).
Instead we see that four years later, in 2009, demand for this novel
more than doubled within twelve months. What was it about 2009?
Every market surge has a history. There may be many contributing
factors to a sudden sales onslaught but one can always trace the
reasons. This can often be a complicated process and one may wind up
with many dead ends before coming to a reliable conclusion as to the
cause, but there is always a cause.
In the case this surge in 2009 it is not so complicated. Have a look
at the cover that sold so well. The cover couldn’t be the sole reason
could it? Design doesn’t make that much of a difference right?
Wrong. It is all in the design. The 2009 release happened to coincide
with another novel series which just happened to be gaining steam at
the time. Perhaps you have heard of it. It involved an angst ridden
teenage girl and her love affair with a vampire and a werewolf.
The Twilight Saga had recently become a huge hit. It had been hitting
the theaters and was discussed everywhere. Low and behold if we
look at the cover design of the re-release of the Twilight series what do we see?
Well now look at that. Something familiar about those colors and the overall feel isn't there? What an odd coincidence…
Make no mistake. This was 100% intentional and from a marketing and
sales standpoint, it was brilliant. The brains behind the 2009
publication of Pride & Prejudice knew their market. They knew the
consumer zeitgeist. They knew what people were reading and they moved on
it.
Does Pride & Prejudice share any similarities with Twilight? Well
the lead character is a girl and Mr. Darcy is a bit of a wolf… but
otherwise to lump these two into the same category would likely cause
Mrs Austen to roll in her grave.
Yet the design of the book managed to subtly do just that. The four
books published in the Twilight series used three key colors and
several basic design elements. This is obvious when comparing the four
of them side by side as we do in the image linked above.
The demographic that Twilight was marketed to had, had their eyes
trained – trained to look for this specific color combination and
style, thus any other book with similar traits would automatically grab
their eye.
What is more, the design team behind the 2009 version of Pride and
Prejudice increased its book size to match the size which Twilight was
published in. The result was a book that looked, for all intents and
purposes, like it belonged to the Twilight series – one that could sit
beside them and not look out-of-place.
Customers would be looking through the shelves of books and their
eyes would automatically flicker what they knew and recognized. Perhaps
some of them even thought this was a fifth edition to the series.
This is the essence and foundation behind branding and that is
exactly what went on. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series was branded with
a very obvious aesthetic look. 2009′s Pride and Prejudice printing
simply hopped on that band wagon and rode its coattails to success.
Design & Sales.
All too often there appears to be an underlying disrespect for solid
design work. Few people – especially in the small business market place –
realize the increase in sales that good design will get them. Instead
the see the price tag that comes along with it and they balk at it. They
cut corners, call in favors, hire rookies or try to do it themselves
with all the “free online tools”. The result is shoddy and
unprofessional design.
Graphic and Web design needs to be rooted in technical and artistic
ability as well and an understanding of what is working in the industry
today.
As we see in the example above, knowing the market and understanding design trends play a huge role in design success.
It is simple and it is truth. Good graphic design increases sales. Good design is worth the price.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rabbit:
That was kind of fun and informative to read, right? Twilight did something positive for humanity...how awesome! Anyway, I am now going to ignore the entire point of his post for now, and just move on to how you had just read a not-as-subtle-as-intended rant and sales pitch from a marketing company.
The user behind Transition Marketing's reddit account created this post to rant about the lack of willingness of businesses to invest in good design and offer next to nothing for a logo, and aimed it at the small business owners of /r/smallbusiness to try and create some cognitive dissonance - "Heck, if it can work for a Jane Austen book I was forced to read in high school, why can't it work for me," and "Oh man, if only I had paid my graphic design guy in money instead of tootsie rolls, maybe my marketing efforts would work."
Followed by: "Oh man, /u/TransitionMarketing sure knows what they're talking about and certainly hip with the design trends and stuff - even put up a infographic to back up the claims! I should totally shower them with 100 dollar bills first chance I get."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm sorry, but a 200 year
old classic does not start flying off the shelves (relative to prior
sales) simply because they ripped off the cool kid.
Pride and Prejudice was an inspiration for the first Twilight book
(2005). In fact, the main character, Bella, even says it's her favorite
book. The first movie released in November 2008. That's when shit got
really crazy for Twilight. The cover change wasn't to capitalize on
Twilight's success; it was to capitalize on their contextual affiliation
with the main character - a character that every teenage girl wanted to
be.
Also, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a re-imagining of the classic
with hot-topic-of-the-year zombie fiction, also released in April 2009
bringing even more attention to Jane Austen's original.
It looks like the screen shot you pulled was from a
NYMag article
trying to make a point about how young adults are a lucrative marketing
segment, so I'm not saying you're at fault here for making the
assumption. It would be a better assumption, and more suitable to make
your point, if it was a new book with no affiliation or relevance to the
"cool kid". At least then you'd have anecdotal evidence that good
design could provide a lift in conversion.
