NE8x® LITFEST 2021
NE8x® global digital accelerator platform launched the Online Literature Fest in 2018, to feature the leading literary influencers across respective domains: Literature & Fiction, romance, crime & thriller, children & young adult, sci-fi & fantasy,business & economics, biographies and beyond for their contribution in literature that impacted readers,across globe and inspiring the next generation writers
BRAND INTRODUCTION
NE8x® started as a digital accelerator for brands and profiles in redefining digital listings, since early 2016.As an emerging brand in this sector, the digital accelerator has been recognising & providing platforms to exceptional influencers across diverse literary domains.As an accelerator, the platform has been mentioned earlier across esteemed media portals regionally, nationally and internationally by the likes of News 18, Yahoo News, ANI, Entrepreneur,TOI, Deccan Herald, The Indian Express,Business Standard, Financial express & beyond
OBJECTIVE OF LITFEST
Launching the first NE8x® Literature Fest in 2018 for the respective categories for the year, the team had just one goal in mind: To establish a community of writers thereby recognising their contributions and helping aspiring writers understand the literary domain in much more depth.The same mission has continued in the journey of NE8x Word as a literary accelerator.Applications for Litfest 2021 were considered based on online profile submissions by our marketing research team across the author profile, book ratings and testimonials regarding their book review.This was undertaken to maximise the nominee author social outreach for readers.Along with the support of esteemed partners and sponsors:Pratilipi, Inkquills Publishing, Rise Pen Industries,Shanti Publishers, Eka Publishers and T beverages, NE8x Litfest 2021 thereby came up with the following checklist for overall succesfull conduct:
- Outreach across social media and promotions
- BioGraph+ discounted web services for authors
- Talk sessions with our reader base communities
- Recognition and certificates for annual phase
- Author story feature in annual yearbook edition
- Talk sessions and engagement for reader-base
- Access to literary boot-camps across domains
EXECUTION PROCESS
Social media mentions and shoutouts featuring the Author & all their esteemed books, with mentions, tags across all leading social media handles of NE8x as on Facebook, Instagram & beyond.The shortlisted nominees were provided with dedicated creatives mentioning their writing profile, books authored.Amazon book links of their respective books were also attached and shared as a separate profile listing on our portal.After the social media sharing, author profiles were then handpicked for Facebook live video sessions, based on their overall online ratings and review score.After selection, author profiles with verified listing were featured on the NE8x Public Figures portal and interview links featuring their literary journey and books were then published.At later stages, an academy to help share more information & strategies based on domain knowledge and mentors was created under the banner of NE8x Word & all the winning authors & nominees felicitated with e-certificates and deliverables
CHALLENGES FACED
In a sector filled with both aspiring and established authors, bridging the existing gap between both these categories was itself a bigger challenge.To the team’s predictions more than 70% aspiring authors had applied for 2021 Litfest, comprising the majority participants in search for platforms to primarily spread the word about their books.Another challenge was communications, in both approach as well as updating where-in thousand of messages would be in our social media inboxes, although initially the problems were faced mostly in our social media handles the problem escalated quickly as using of similar keywords, links for reference used to get blocked from sending for days in a row.In a domain where the writers, publishers and reviewer ecosystem are involved, solving every challenge keeping in the best interests of all the three elements of the ecosystem gets tougher with testing times.Logistics although was not an issue in the case however, as even before COVID19, our entire LitFest has been digital and completely online but majority of the authors applying had coordination issues mostly while aiming to go for the live video sessions, which was later restricted to weekend basis only.Another massive impact was going paperless, the entire conduct approach of the Litfest being completely online ( which is among the first of its kind in India ) also led to the deliverables for the campaign mailed in soft copies, the team had to continuously provide post – campaign support informing the same to all the winners of Litfest 2021 Edition spread all across the world including notable NRI (Non residential Indians) writers who participated in large numbers
WINNER LIST
Handpicked after rigorous selction process and shortlisting criteria from the 500+ listed nominees for LitFest 2021, the final list of top 100 winning feature list for the 2021 edition, in their literary endeavours are:
Rounak Rai, Sambit Daspatnaik, Gaurav Kataria, Aradhye Ackshatt, Jemimah Jonah, Ekta Saigal Pandit, Harish Muralidhar, Namita Das, Naseha Sameen, Vinay D Bajaj, Rohan Singhvi, Ishita Gauhri, Mahesh Ratnam Rajan, Sreeja Mohandas, Eshwarmurthy G Pillai, Maniraj Chervirala, Hemangi Sarode Prasad, Shalu Thakur, Jaymin Shah, Shreya Faria, Raksha Gupta, Simran Yaseen, Nilshree Yelulkar, Krishnan S, Anagha Ratish, Rohit Bagaitkar, Yati Patel, Fathima Chandhini, Parishmita Baruah, Sudham, Balasubramanian Mahadevan, Chaitanya Yechuri, Sona Sharma, Rohan Patwardhan, Vikas Singh Chauhan, Kanika Saxena, Hemanth Fernando, Colonel [Dr.] Ramanan Duraiswami, Rucha Joshi, Shraddha Nyati, Neha Phull, Divya Pradyumnan, Madhurima, Levi Vaguez, Nihar Bhonsule, Manisha Amol, Abhinidha S, Vivek Chowthri, Shivi Goyal, J.M. Riyaa Josh, Sweta Singh “Sonee”, Jagjit Rana, Geeta Lal Sahai, Ramesh Arreja, Rajeev Sinha, Sazina Khan, Sushmita Gupta, Riya Ranka, Sangamesh D Patil (Manu D), Jyoti B, Surabhi Naik, Dr. Shraddha Kulkarni, Patricia D Souza, Srirup Choudhary, Raywa Ravipati, Romi Dey, Shantanu Gote, Prashanth Chakkula, Anita Rajani, Kinshuk Srivastava, Renuka Gangan, Ratika Mishra, Chitkala Mulye, Madhumita Mandal, Chirmi Shimray, Avijeet Das, Pranay Bhalerao, A S Sethupathi, Rekha Balachandran, Priyanka Das, Leena Basumatary Kendurkar, Manikya Sanghi, Meghna Das, Haritosh Srivastav, Meera V, Pradeep Kumar Yadav, Parthita Dutta, Vini Kunhappan, Namrata Naresh, Manjul Manish, Mahoor Zahid, Sarmistha Gupta, Sankalp Shrivastava, Deepa A Agarwal, Suman Bhattacharya, Hema Myer Sood, Jasmine Akhtar, Dr. Navya Srinivas, Ann Meryem Baycan, Mir Raashidah
RESULTS
For marketing research conducted digitally, campaigns are driven by impact rather than just numbers.But even though when numbers show up as well, alongside the objectives set beforehand, then the results are worth sharing.Although all winning notified authors have been featured on our social media handles marked as ‘Awardee’ and separate mails also been sent to acknowledge the same with all the deliverables and links, the team is working on an exclusive book featuring the winning authors of 2021 Online Litfest Edition.Overall, in span of 280 days, the NE8x® Litfest campaign has:
- Reached over 20K+ literature community
- Led to 480+ shortlisted author nominees
- Resulted in an Author assistance platform
- Selected 100+ author for Litfest’21 edition
- Helped bring literature ecosystem closer
