Background

Alexander McCabe, founder of AAS McCabe Ltd., is the author and publisher of the bestselling book, The Christmas Present.  The company is looking to fully commercially exploit the franchise through building the brand. Following the same business model as the $120m franchise, The Elf on the Shelf, AAS McCabe Ltd has developed a gift box set that includes a customized snow globe and fully illustrated hardback book.  Through the Make It To Market grant, the book has been translated into German, French, Italian and Spanish and each of these translations has become an international bestseller in their own right.

Challenge

The company was looking for assistance with a marketing strategy to take the product further.

Solution

Interface partnered the company with the University of Strathclyde Marketing Works project to develop a marketing strategy to look at the following;

• Current Market
• Potential Markets
• How to maximise marketing spend.

Marketing Works is a compulsory, integral part of the Strathclyde’s Marketing postgraduate degree programmes where every student works on a consulting project put forward by a business organisation.  The students work in groups of five or six and are supervised by academics who teach on the programmes and draw on their experience in research and knowledge exchange to guide the project. There is a fee of £250 (including VAT) to participate in Marketing Works.

Benefits

Company – As a direct result of the Marketing Works project, the company was able to secure a deal with WH Smith, initially with the store in Glasgow, where they agreed to give Alexander McCabe four windows for display purposes as well as book signings in the run up to Christmas.  A further meeting with the Glasgow store resulted in WH Smith offering Alexander a Scottish book signing tour in December 2018 in each of their 50 stores throughout Scotland.

Academic – Students gain an invaluable and challenging learning experience as a result of this programme. Students also acquire skills in developing professional relationships as well as applying concepts and techniques taught on the programme. The academics involved in the Marketing Works have an invaluable opportunity to develop a working relationship in knowledge exchange.

The Next Phase 

Following on from the initial collaboration AAS McCabe Ltd wanted to produce a video animation of selected segments of The Christmas Present book that could be used to market the book helping to increase sales and to help entice potential investors to fund a full movie adaptation of the story. 

Interface linked them to Computing Science students at Edinburgh Napier University who developed the 60 second animation encompassing the key requirements of the client AAS McCabe Ltd.  The six key areas to be covered in the animation were to include, that Mrs Claus allocates each and every child their very own elf the minute they are born and each elf shares the same name as the child.  If the child stops believing in Santa then their elf is banished from the north pole to the south pole until the child believes in Santa again.  Santa’s happiest reindeer Gladys, who is the world’s first female reindeer is so happy that she even has “GLAD” in her name. All the elves are under very strict instructions that they must only give Gladys one carrot, as any more make her fart. Each of these points were to be included with appropriate sound effects and voices for each of the characters within the animation.  

It was intended that the animation could be used for several different purposes i.e., to show potential investors what the story could look like and how it could be turned into a short film and for various marketing purposes on several different platforms including social media and websites, therefore it was important that both sound and animation quality were of a sufficient standard to allow the animation to be played on the relevant platforms. 

The students at Napier worked closely with Alexander McCabe author of The Christmas Present and the resulting animation was achieved.