Welcome to LJ’s Bubble Room – where marketing ideas and tools bubble up to the surface. In a time when libraries face so much competition and need to reinvent ourselves as transformational agencies ( see OCLC’s From Awareness to Funding report: oclc: From Awareness to Funding) I believe that is going to happen with a lot of help from savvy marketing, not just because we will it so. Here in Bubble Room I’ll talk about terms, trends, innovations in the field of marketing, both specific to libraries and to the marketplace in general.
Let’s start with this critical marketing question: in this age of Google, when information is available everywhere and at anytime, what compels people to use a library…in marketing terms, what is the key differentiator, the value-add, of libraries? Answering this question defines how a library positions itself to customers and articulates its value to the community.
The answer, of course, is our people. At Columbus Metropolitan Library the way we say it is: Without our people, we’re just four walls and a bunch of books. We use this headline in many applications, from advertising to recruiting. But because the answer is so self-evident, many libraries generally take the value of our people for granted. Instead of highlighting the faces and personalities of our staff, I see a lot of focus on the very information that is easily available anywhere.
This is why at our library we invested some modest dollars in good quality photographs of our staff and have plastered their warm and welcoming faces everywhere – from our website (columbuslibrary.org) to banners to personalized posters. The impact has been powerful and effective, practically making rock stars out of our staff. And it is our people who are going to make our libraries those transformational agencies that we need to become.
Here’s an example of something we did, super easy. The shell is a template and the copy remains the same among all our staff. The photo, name and signature change (obviously!) We print these in house and on demand.
Let me know what’s on your mind and the marketing challenges you are facing. We have a lot to talk about!
About Alison Circle
We find the same to be true at Harris County Public Library here in Houston, TX. At my branch, when customers walk in the front door, when they look up they see giant READ posters we made of our customers. The customers and families who have appeared on the posters have become local celebrities. Children get excited when they recognize faces they know. When the posters first came out, the local paper was glad to feature a story about them. One of the posters does feature a staff member who climbed up a tree with a copy of Tom Sawyer. Now ALA has made mini READ poster software available on their website, so everyone has the opportunity to try a READ poster campaign.
Just as catchy covers “sell” books, having lots of friendly faces…whether staff or patrons…helps to “sell” library services.
Thanks for the ideas!
I hope to see some good ideas from this new blog. Could you ask the techies to add your blog to the list of possible RSS feeds? Thanks!
We want to come up with a brand or logo for our community college library. The school PR person is on board but how do I start. I’ve ordered the book on branding from ALA, after all books are always a good place to start but then what? I hate to put together another committee.
I love the idea of posters that make library staff and patrons local celebrities. I’ll suggest that to my wife, the director of the Hollidaysburg Area Public Library.
I also appreciate your other post about forming an overarching marketing strategy. I don’t know if our library has been that composed, but we have something of a strategy to make our library *itself* a celebrity, as the center of efforts that bring national attention.
I’ll give two examples below, but first let me say that these “splashy” efforts are NOT meant to substitute for the library’s core mission of being a center for lifelong learning where area residents are informed, enlightened and inspired. I’m proud of my wife for leading the way to tremendous growth in the last four years: circulation up 50%, program participation up 30%, public computer use up 187%.
Having said that, here are two of our attention-getting efforts:
We’re two years into establishing a signature community event called Pencilmania: volunteers copy a notable book word-for-word in pencil. The first year, National Public Radio covered this–though, sadly, all mention of the library was edited out! (To hear the story, search “NPR Keith Eldred”.)
The second year, we doubled participation, and local NPR did a story. So we do see this event as a means to bring broad positive attention to our community.
A second effort, just underway, is downright flaky and convoluted, but may also bring widespread attention to our library as the one that helped create a household word and change etiquette as we know it.
The explanation (convoluted, remember) is:
My wife and our teen sons wrote a novel together and self-published it. We attributed our novel to pseudonym MANDY GREEN, and we’d love for anyone named MANDY GREEN to read and comment on it, as described at MandyGreenProject(dot)com.
The reason for the MANDY GREEN angle is that our novel’s plot centers on a “mondegreen,” a mishearing of something said or sung. A famous example is hearing “all of the other reindeer” as “Olive the Other Reindeer.” The word “mondegreen” was added to Webster’s Dictionary only this past summer.
One of the project’s goals is to help make mondegreen a household word by highlighting two (hopefully memorable) examples:
- MANDY GREEN is a mondegreen for “mondegreen” itself.
- GAZOON HIGH TWIZZLE (our novel’s title) is a mondegreen for “Gesundheit whistle,” a comical way to acknowledge a sneeze. This is an unlikely centerpiece for a story, but the hope is that readers will find our work worth reading and commenting on. Particular any reader named MANDY GREEN.
With the help of enough angels named MANDY GREEN, maybe the book will catch on and help raise money for our library and bring attention. Those are the ultimate goals. Mondegreens and Gesundheit-whistles are the quirky means.
As mentioned, the whole effort is flaky and convoluted. Possibly hopeless. But fun. What can I say? Life is short.
We do believe that this effort–as well as Pencilmania–will help illustrate that our library is special and full of surprises.
I hope there was some value in this long comment. Best wishes with your new blog.
Keith Eldred
In love with the library director in Hollidaysburg, PA
The RSS feed is set up–please click on the orange icon next to the blog’s name and then scroll down to Bubble Room in the blog section. Thanks!
Responding to mjmlibrarian above: so many answers to your question above — wanting a new logo and wondering where to start. As this blog continues, I will talk about branding and logos, but first and foremost a logo is just one articulation of the brand. Branding is a promise you make to your customer. That can be represented by a logo, but it is realized in the entire experience at every customer touchpoint.
The very first thing you need to do is determine what is your brand — what do you stand for, what is the promise you make to your customer? At Columbus Metropolitan Library we convened a group and, after several exercises, determined our brand essence. Our logo evolved out of that.
It was critical to have a cross-departmental team on board to guide the process for buy-in and for selling the end result to staff.
Let’s talk more. I can help.
Oh your blog speaks to me! I am the “marketing programmer” in a library in a town of 5000!! I want to do so much but we are all interconnected with other library systems. *sigh* So ya basically I’m a glorified poster maker.