Overdrive Driving Publicity

Driving publicity and social media impact

OverDrive – a digital distributor of e-books, audiobooks, music and videos to public libraries and publishers – wanted to build national awareness of libraries’ free digital media offerings. The client reached out to Dix & Eaton to generate publicity as its national Digital Bookmobile tour traveled to public libraries across the country, encouraging free downloads through library Web sites.

D&E’s team kicked off a media relations campaign that incorporated social media elements to help OverDrive promote the tour.

To generate attendance via media coverage, the team created 3D mailers with a “Pimp My Library” theme for key New York reporters and producers, each including a highly glamorized pair of librarian glasses.

The team also leveraged the Digital Bookmobile online press site, FaceBook fan site, YouTube videos and Twitter tweets to maximize interest in digital downloads and the Digital Bookmobile tour. When stories in major media outlets ran, D&E used those social networks to let people know about the articles and encouraged them to pass them along to their friends.

Coverage included major national print, broadcast, lifestyle and online outlets.  Members of social media sites YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Ning and more posted interviews and video, while bloggers also wrote about the New York launch event and digital book tour. OverDrive also reported “organic growth” of the use of libraries’ virtual catalogs since the campaign began.