Since I discovered last week that Costa were taking over the Whitbread Book Awards, I’ve been ruminating on what that means. Don’t ask why… it just seems to have got stuck in my mind.
It’s not just that asking “Who won this year’s Costa?” sounds even worse than “Martin Amis won last year’s MAN Booker”.
One thing that immediately sprung to mind was this article from the BBC, from when Whitbread announced that they would be stopping sponsoring the award. Yup, makes sense – very few people would immediately (or ever, in fact) associate the Whitbread Book Awards with TGI Friday’s or Premier Travel Inn, so the sponsorship makes little commercial sense. Same problem the Booker keeps facing. The line that interests me is a quote from a Whitbread representative:
After long consideration, we decided our sponsorship was no longer commercially sensible, even under one of our other brand names.
But Costa IS one of Whitbread’s other brand names. Has it really taken Whitbread a year to realise that they can’t find anyone else to sponsor the awards? Or have they decided to keep hold of it for the time being?
Costa, of course, operates coffee shops inside several bookstores, including my Waterstone’s. I can’t help feeling that there will be certain merchandising advantages to the new deal, but I wonder whether there could be downsides, too… Waterstone’s, for example, has always heavily promoted the Award, but not all of its coffee shop concessions are operated by Costa. Will a Waterstone’s with a Coffee Republic on its second floor really be able to devote a window to Costa? I don’t think so, somehow…
Oh – why this obsession with Costa, all of a sudden? Well, there is one here in Alex. Two, in fact. Strange, but true. I’ve not spotted a Starbucks, but there are a couple of Costas.
In other book news… I really, really recommend reading The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips. Fantastic read, terrific adventure story, gloriously funny. Helps that I can picture where he’s talking about…!