Have you seen those crazy Vine’s that Audible dubbed #VineThatLine? Two of my favorites are rapper, Ice T’s version with some very necessary swearing, and Joy Smith & Amil Dave’s Morse code version. So if you haven’t stumbled on this on Twitter, or if you have never made it to the Vine corner of the internet (like me until this very afternoon), #VineThatLine asks users to create short videos of them saying the famous line from Hamlet: “To be, or not to be.” It’s all to spread news about the new audio book version of Hamlet.
So why bring this up? Because I’ve laughed at Ice T’s version every single time it loops? Nope, because I think:
- What a cool idea. It injects some fun and playfulness into a play that has a lot of tragedy… although not nearly as many deaths as Game of Thrones…
- It is SUCH a good marketing campaign!
There are many, many, MANY articles/blog posts/tweets etc. about creating a brand and author platform. Probably as many as there are deaths in GoT… and that’s saying something. But the general idea is to get you name/face/book/writing out into the world and to get people excited about it. But that’s hard. Have you looked at Twitter lately? Every other post is a BUY MY BOOK tweet. Yeah, I may have spammed the interweb this week with my book cover, but that’s because it rocks.
But it’s tough. It’s really tough to keep up with the plethora of possible social media outlets. We may not all have Ice T backing our hashtag and book campaigns, but I think it’s great to look at the success (and hilarity) of Audible’s hashtaggery (yes, I’ve now coined that word) and learn from it. The #VineThatLine campaign of course will benefit book sales, but it’s mostly just fostering the community of Shakespeare-lovers to come out and wave their Vine-flag high.
Suzanne Rigdon 