HarperCollins’ online marketing manager explains how the campaign behind Michael Crichton’s latest best seller created a multimedia ‘view into the world of [the] book.’

By Matt Steinmetz

A bar of soap that zaps fat, puppies that don’t grow up, and a bug DNA kit. It’s not everyday in a book-marketing veteran’s career that he’s able to be as creative as Jeffrey Yamaguchi has been able to be during the recent marketing campaign for Michael Crichton’s latest best seller, “Next.”

While promoting “Next,” Yamaguchi—HarperCollins’ online marketing manager—and his marketing teammates created a fictional genetic research firm by the name of Nextgencode. They then developed fake products supposedly being sold by the company, including a revolutionary weight-loss soap, and supported these ventures with online video commercials that ran on mainstream sites, like YouTube, and drove interest in Crichton’s story.