Stationery Icons, a 304-page illustrated hardback by Christopher Leonard-Morgan, has launched its first Christmas campaign, positioning the book as a distinctive gift for stationery enthusiasts, collectors and design lovers.
The campaign runs through to Christmas and combines advertising on StationeryNews.net and PGBuzz.net with promotional activity across Instagram and LinkedIn. Its subject matter, according to the announcement, is the brands, personalities and stories that have made stationery such an enduring fascination.
Two London events tested the gifting appeal
The campaign follows what the publisher describes as encouraging sales at two recent events: Open House at Stationers' Hall on 20 September and the London Pen Show in Hammersmith on 10–11 October. Both, the announcement states, highlighted the book's appeal as a present, with customers buying copies for friends, family and fellow stationery enthusiasts.
Leonard-Morgan said the most encouraging signal was how many buyers saw the book as a gift for someone else. Many people know someone who has a favourite fountain pen, treasures a particular notebook or simply cannot resist a stationery shop, he said, and the book brings together the stories behind the brands those readers love in a volume they can enjoy and return to for years.
Pairing two stationery trade outlets with Instagram and LinkedIn gives the campaign both trade readership and a social audience of collectors and design-minded gift buyers, while the participation of featured brands is intended to carry the message into individual companies' own audiences.
Featured brands invited to amplify
The Christmas campaign invites the 100 brands featured in the book to mark their inclusion through their own social-media channels and customer communications, extending awareness of the title among stationery enthusiasts around the world.
Richard Webb, Publisher at Narrative Media, said stationery inspires a remarkable degree of affection and loyalty. He described the book's distinguishing quality as the extraordinary breadth of stories it gathers, spanning six centuries of ingenuity, entrepreneurship and design. The publisher, he added, is pleased to give the featured brands an opportunity to share their own stories with customers and followers, building on the wider interest the campaign generates.
Price, print run and ordering
The first edition has an initial print run of just 1,000 copies. It is priced at £80 and can be ordered directly from the book's dedicated website.