PR: "Brand Expedition goes to stock market"

“English edition will conquer the world”

Utrecht – In order to translate his successful book 'Brand Expedition, an expedition to Europe's most inspiring brands', Martijn Arets will, in the next 8 weeks, use crowdfunding in order to sell 1000 stocks of his book.

Last Monday, he used an old cargo bike to visit the place where the big boys play – or rather, sell their own stocks: Beursplein 5 in Amsterdam, near the Beurs van Berlage. Using a fun guerilla action, he created attention for his own shares. Investors, besides the standard share of 20% of the book- project, will get free books, access to exclusive presentations and Skype advice sessions of brand consultant Arets.

In 2010, Arets travelled across Europe in a old Volkswagen T2 camper van and interviewed the CEO's, founders and brand executives of 20 authentic European brands. He captured his experiences in the book Brand Expedition. In order to finance the translation and production, together with Symbid he initiated this crowdfunding campaign.

Arets: “Banks generally aren't in tune with what you do as an entrepreneur. The pro of crowdfunding is that shareholders become immediate ambassadors of your project. Because they share in the profits they're very motived to activate their own network. Investing is possible from €20 and after 7000 sold books after taxes, a break-even of their input is accomplished. In order to sustain the shareholders' interest in the long run, they automatically get a share of 10% in any of the following translations. Currently a Chinese translation is in consideration”.

45 million fans
To immediately put his English translation in the spotlights worldwide, Arets will challenge the fans of the visited brands (45 million on Facebook alone) to read a chapter about 'their' brand in front of a webcam. They will participate in the first online video book ever. Arets hopes that this action connects at least 1000 brand fans and will globally position his story.

Arets proved last year that he has a keen insight in how to use social media to create attention about his expedition and his book: he gathered nearly €1 million of free publicity. One example is a video he made with a secret camera where he, in different bookshops, bought his own books before they were actually on sale. The attention this video got on Twitter and other social media outlets, made sure that his book within a couple of days after the release was available in several bookshops.

Note for the editors: Martijn Arets is available for interviews and press photo's in high resolution are available through request. For more questions please contact him at: martijn@brand-expedition.eu.

Links:
- Youtube channel with video of e.g. ‘stockmarket’, ‘bookstore guerrilla’ and booktrailer
- Flickr channel Brand Expedition with lowres pictures and press photo's

PR: "Brand Expedition goes to stock market"