Launchpad: Marketing on Cruise Control
And though Morton did make the interview rounds, his availability was put in jeopardy when reports surfaced that Morton had gone into hiding due to threats from Cruise and the Church of Scientology.
“It was reported that Andrew was in hiding; whether that’s true or not, I can’t necessarily say,” says Baldacci. “Let’s just say that we had a plan for Andrew in terms of how to promote the book, and we stuck to that plan.”
It never hurts when media are clamoring to write about you.
“Us Weekly came out prior to the holidays, and they pretended like they had seen the book, but they hadn’t; they were just purely speculating,” says Baldacci. “And then the week before publication, there were a few things that made it seem as if the book was [already] out. So we knew that was kind of coming.”
So with the clouds juiced and the sky ready to open up, the advertising push was pretty simple. “The challenge was to say: The book’s on sale today. [We ran a] big, full page in The New York Times announcing the publication of the book,” says Baldacci, “and we also did a lot of online advertising.”
Baldacci would not comment on the book’s marketing budget or sales projections. He did say that the 400,000 initial printing reported on Wikipedia.com is inaccurate, though he would not say whether the figure was high or low.
Brian Howard is the senior editor at the Philadelphia City Paper. His work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Orlando Weekly, Magnet, Raygun, Philadelphia Music Makers, Target Marketing and Inside Direct Mail.
