{"id":18254,"date":"2016-03-29T08:30:05","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T12:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18254"},"modified":"2016-03-29T08:30:05","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T12:30:05","slug":"most-interactive-promo-item-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18254","title":{"rendered":"Most Interactive Promo Item Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got the mail yesterday on my way out for lunch. I wasn&#8217;t intending to go\u00a0back in to the store until after I&#8217;d picked up my lunch, but something very curious made me head right to the store with the mail. No, there wasn&#8217;t a large check that needed immediate depositing. No, there wasn&#8217;t a personal note from a customer saying thanks for a great book recommendation. But rather, there was a coconut. Or what seemed like a coconut. I walked back into the store smiling and shaking the mail. It&#8217;s not every day that we get an unwrapped fruit in the mail. The coconut had a label on it that said, &#8220;Can you mail a coconut?&#8221; This was either a genius marketing idea from National Geographic or the strangest thing to ever arrive via USPS.<!--more--><br \/>\nNational Geographic was responsible for mailing said item. They were announcing their new series of kids&#8217; books called Real or Fake? So, now I was totally curious. Was this a real coconut? Or some very clever imitation? I shook the mail and it rattled in a way that indicated there might be liquid inside. Okay, so that seemed like it could be a <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-18255\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/IMG_5446-2.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_5446\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" \/>real coconut. But the outside seemed to look like brownish paper. Admittedly, living in Vermont, I do not encounter coconuts on a regular basis, so I really couldn&#8217;t tell if this was a coconut or a very clever prank.<br \/>\nCuriosity got the best of me and I started to open the coconut. First thing I noticed was whatever this was, it was a complex, multi-layered item that would need more time to open than I had planned. So, I took off my jacket; clearly I would be going to lunch later. I&#8217;ve created a photo montage of the coconut opening that involves not only tools, but the help of the butcher at the meat market next door.<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_18265\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18265\" class=\"wp-image-18265\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/first-nut-2.jpg\" alt=\"How hard can this be?\" width=\"240\" height=\"320\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-18265\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">How hard can this be?<\/p><\/div><br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_18260\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18260\" class=\"wp-image-18260\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/coconut-3.jpg\" alt=\"Sure sounds like a coconut. Notice the screw driver, this was going to require tools.\" width=\"240\" height=\"361\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-18260\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sure sounds like a coconut.<\/p><\/div><br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_18264\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18264\" class=\"wp-image-18264 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/mikemore-2.jpg\" alt=\"mikemore\" width=\"240\" height=\"320\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-18264\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mike, the butcher, gets out the cleaver and a steel.<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nAfter 15 minutes of using the cleaver, Mike finally opened the coconut. So, yes, you can mail a coconut. In all my years of bookselling, I have never spent so much time opening a publisher&#8217;s promotional item. Often when I get promos they have glitter or raffia, but never have I had to use cleavers to open them. I must say, though: never has there been a promo so exotic or so yummy. And yes, I will be ordering these books!<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_18259\" style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18259\" class=\"wp-image-18259 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/IMG_5456-2.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_5456\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-18259\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Success!<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How does a bookseller open a coconut?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}