By publishing an own book about the mistakes of the industry’s biggest experts we wanted to be the most talked about brand during the festival – with little to no budget for producing and promoting the book.

As the festival itself had a lot of sponsors standing out was a key objective. Thus we wanted and needed to use unusual media to get attention among festival visitors. Key to getting as much free coverage among relevant print and online media was the attached donation: All revenues of the book were contributed towards the Art Direcors Club’s Junior Programme.

The language service provider WIENERS+WIENERS mainly lives off mistakes done by advertisers. We dramatized that fact by means of Germany’s leading advertisers. 23 top creatives were asked to write down their biggest mistake – in a book especially published for admen: “My Biggest Mistake”. To dramatize the mistakes being made we chose the subject of confessing. The reader should have the feeling of sitting inside a confessional box – listening to the sins of their industry’s masters. The design accommodates that with a woodish slipcase, punched-out pardon screens, gold foil stamp, a cover made of red velvet and a handmade gilt edge.

With 0€ media spending we reached more than 350,000 contacts via print media alone. As a result the book was well spoken of among the ADC festival visitors and all 100 pieces of “My Biggest Mistake” were sold out shortly after the festival. A four-digit sum was donated to the Art Directors Club’s Junior Programme. The number of visitors to the WIENERS+WIENERS hompage increased by 400% (compared to May 2012)!