TOPS realised an incredible amount of book-clubbers have a desire to be authors themselves one day – so we provided the platform to make it happen by creating a collaborative project called ‘Novel Novel’.

We wrote the first four lines of the story and aspirant scribes got to take the tale in their own direction by writing the next four lines continuing the tale; then another writer got four lines, another four lines and so on. It could be whimsical, scary, hilarious... whatever they wanted. The one thing it did turn out as was a wonderfully schizophrenic roller coaster ride of fantasy.

And then another thing happened – people asking if they could contribute not words but pictures? So we allowed artists to begin illustrating their favourite passages and chapters.

We then took our story, inspired by wine, and printed a book from wine itself - an Olive Brook Shiraz.

To begin with a call went out for aspirant writers at book clubs to help co-write a book we'd be calling 'Novel Novel'.

During the course of 2 months hundreds of people added their 4 lines of copy to the tale, 141 of which made the final cut after editing out the incoherent, pornographic and plain idiotic submissions. Together with 32 finally approved illustrations the book was printed from wine and sent out as a reward to the contributors.

700 Copies were also sent to TOPS at SPAR retailers who'd heard of this unique book written by their customers.

We would not be so presumptous to think that this activation alone contributed to the vast increase in sales so we'll stick to what we can measure directly - the online activation and participation thereof.

The campaign delivered huge successes. Against it’s objectives, of engagement, participation and driving loyalty, the campaign success included:

•An engagement rate of 307,82% over target or 15,391, delivering a saving of R112,708.04 and value add of R346,937.89;

•A conversion rate of 560.23% of target (18.21%), giving a value add of R768,319.01;

•An inclusion rate (actual authors and artists included in the final book) of 173 – 432.5% of target giving TOPS at SPAR a saving of R128,342.33.

•Total campaign saving of R378,193.28;

•Total campaign financial value add of R1,670,337.49;

•Total campaign ROI of R1,837,279.02 or 1100.55%.

Fans grew by 163% in just 18 days. This niche, highly engaged community now sits at over 24400 fans.