Kobo rarely launches commercials, they might do one a year, normally around the holiday season. They have just launched a new advert that is promoting Kobo Plus, their online subscription service. The campaign has two goals: To show that there’s no shame in reading something that falls more into genre fiction than bestseller, but also to highlight Kobo Plus’ wide array of titles across genres, all of which are available for a monthly fee following the service’s one-month free trial.
The new commercial is called “Be a Reader, Not a Follower.” It includes a 30-second hero spot that follows a woman as she attempts to tell others of the ebook that she’s been enjoying on Kobo Plus: Love, Luck, and Clusterf*ck by Bree Dahlia. Not only is her mouth pixelated and censored when she reaches the expletive in the book’s title, she is also humorously drowned out by noises around her, such as a jackhammer and a well-timed school bell. In the end, she yells the book’s title, (censored) expletive and all, at an after-school pickup before informing the shocked onlookers she found the book on Kobo Plus.
The target audience of the campaign are avid readers who benefit from an unlimited subscription model like Kobo Plus, says Lindsay Gray, director, brand and product marketing at Rakuten Kobo. “Our audience reads for fun and pleasure. They’re dedicated genre-readers who would just as soon dive into a saucy series or a serial-killer thriller than pick up that “important” book dominating the book review pages,” she explains.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
