1 Please complete this form and send it with your entry to arrive on or before February 1, 2013. Email your entry to: [email protected]Library Category: All types of libraries are welcome to enter, and international entries are welcome. Entry narrative must be in English for review. College/University Public School Special State Friends Group Library Associations Library Consortia Country: United States Materials Included: Send electronic versions of materials or appropriate websites used as part of the Strategic Communication Program you are entering for the John Cotton Dana Award. You do not need to produce additional media support exclusively for your entry. Essential: Project Narrative Overall Presentation (.PDF, .DOC, .PPT, etc.) Optional: Video, Audio, photos, PDFs, etc. Please type your answers; include separate pages as necessary. 1. Sent by: Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library (name of library, agency, or organization) Address: 315 W. Oak Ave. City: Jonesboro State: Arkansas Zip or mail code: 72401 Country: United States Phone: 870.935.5133 Fax: 870.935.7987 Library Director’s name: Phyllis Burkett Contact Person for Entry: Name: Ben Bizzle Title: Director of Technology Email: [email protected]Phone: 870.935.5133 ext. 1145 2. Short, Descriptive Title of Entry Submitted: “Meme Your Library” 3. Duration of public relations/strategic communication program entered. The program must have occurred entirely during 2012, the 20112012 academic year, or a multiyear project completed in 2012. Starting date: March 2012 Ending date: December 2012 4. Budget (entries are evaluated in budget category): Total annual library budget (including payroll): $2.9 million Cost of strategic communications program being submitted: Cost to library: $40,000 Value of inkind contributions: $0 Total cost of communication program: $40,000 5. Project Participants: Library staffing levels and budgets vary widely. Give reviewers a general idea of how your entry was developed and implemented. How much of your project was done by library employees? InHouse Contributions: Virtually all work done for this project, aside from several drawings, was by the library’s creative team, which consists of Ben Bizzle (Director of Technology), Joe Box (Assistant Systems Administrator), Valerie Carroll (Information Services), Melloney Dunlap (Graphic Designer), and Brandi Hodges (PR Specialist/Virtual Librarian) External Support: Did you use the services of an outside professional(s) on this program (for example, an advertising or public relations firm, media production Company, graphic designer)? Yes No If “yes,” list the services, vendors, and costs: The creative team chose all content for our posters, and our graphic designer put the final products together. To meet deadlines, we did contract 12 drawings with local artists at $25/drawing, $400 total. 6. Copyright/Trademark: Did you use copyrighted materials? Yes No If “yes,” are written copyright use permission letters included for any copyrighted or trademarked material? Yes No
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Please complete this form and send it with your entry to arrive on or before February 1, 2013. Email your entry to: [email protected] Library Category: All types of libraries are welcome to enter, and international entries are welcome. Entry narrative must be in English for review.
College/University Public
School Special State Friends Group Library Associations Library Consortia
Country: United States Materials Included: Send electronic versions of materials or appropriate websites used as part of the Strategic Communication Program you are entering for the John Cotton Dana Award. You do not need to produce additional media support exclusively for your entry. Essential: Project Narrative Overall Presentation (.PDF, .DOC, .PPT, etc.) Optional: Video, Audio, photos, PDFs, etc. Please type your answers; include separate pages as necessary. 1. Sent by: Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library (name of library, agency, or organization) Address: 315 W. Oak Ave. City: Jonesboro State: Arkansas Zip or mail code: 72401 Country: United States Phone: 870.935.5133 Fax: 870.935.7987 Library Director’s name: Phyllis Burkett Contact Person for Entry: Name: Ben Bizzle Title: Director of Technology Email: [email protected] Phone: 870.935.5133 ext. 1145 2. Short, Descriptive Title of Entry Submitted: “Meme Your Library”
3. Duration of public relations/strategic communication program entered. The program must have occurred entirely during 2012, the 2011-‐2012 academic year, or a multi-‐year project completed in 2012. Starting date: March 2012 Ending date: December 2012 4. Budget (entries are evaluated in budget category): Total annual library budget (including payroll): $2.9 million Cost of strategic communications program being submitted:
Cost to library: $40,000 Value of in-‐kind contributions: $0 Total cost of communication program: $40,000
5. Project Participants: Library staffing levels and budgets vary widely. Give reviewers a general idea of how your entry was developed and implemented. How much of your project was done by library employees? In-‐House Contributions: Virtually all work done for this project, aside from several drawings, was by the library’s creative team, which consists of Ben Bizzle (Director of Technology), Joe Box (Assistant Systems Administrator), Valerie Carroll (Information Services), Melloney Dunlap (Graphic Designer), and Brandi Hodges (PR Specialist/Virtual Librarian) External Support: Did you use the services of an outside professional(s) on this program (for example, an advertising or public relations firm, media production Company, graphic designer)?
Yes No If “yes,” list the services, vendors, and costs: The creative team chose all content for our posters, and our graphic designer put the final products together. To meet deadlines, we did contract 12 drawings with local artists at $25/drawing, $400 total. 6. Copyright/Trademark: Did you use copyrighted materials? Yes No If “yes,” are written copyright use permission letters included for any copyrighted or trademarked material?
Yes No
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Descriptive Campaign Summary
Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library has spent the last four years building a state-‐of-‐the-‐art digital library
with online services and digital platforms. To raise community awareness of the digital library, our director, Phyllis Burkett, authorized the formation of a creative team to make promotional materials. Our campaign, “Meme Your
Library,” began in March 2012 and involved four billboards in the local area and posters placed both around the community and in the library. Materials were styled after the popular internet e-‐cards meme, using images and
language popularized by social media in order to reach our internet-‐savvy patrons.
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Campaign Narrative
I. Needs Assessment and Planning
In the interests of developing a 21st century library, Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library has, over the last four years, implemented an array of online platforms and services that we call the digital library. It comprises
our redesigned website and new mobile website; tools like text-‐a-‐librarian, online resume review upload, and account management; and services such as Overdrive, Freegal, and research databases. One of our early slogans
for the digital library was, “Your library, everywhere you are.” This long-‐term transformation, however, proved that it would require more than a catchphrase; we needed an incredibly savvy public awareness campaign to
effectively communicate the digital library’s benefits to our community and encourage use of these new products and services. We learned very quickly that our old marketing strategies would not work for this new challenge. In
the interests of planning and executing a new communication strategy for the library, director Phyllis Burkett organized the time, staff, and funding for a creative team. Before crafting the campaign itself, the team assessed
our community and target audience, set campaign goals, and developed strategies for meeting those goals. The creative team set three immediate objectives for the project: increased community awareness of the
library, increased usage of the digital library, and increased direct patron interaction with both the digital and physical library. In addition to these measurable short-‐term objectives, the team also established four more
abstract, long-‐term goals: 1) to increase library visibility in both the digital and real worlds; 2) to generate curiosity about the library within our community; 3) to use this increase in visibility and curiosity to encourage people to
create positive associations with the library; and 4) to create virality by designing a campaign that compels people to talk about the campaign itself. After setting short-‐ and long-‐term objectives, the creative team then identified
two target audiences for our campaign: a primary audience of media-‐savvy 16-‐40 year-‐olds who are not using the library, and a secondary audience of existing library fans and supporters. Our marketing materials needed to appeal on some level to both of these groups in order to attract new patrons and transition our regulars to the
library’s new direction. In addition, reaching these target audiences would serve the overall goal of increasing our library’s visibility within the community.
After determining the objectives and target audience for our new marketing campaign, the creative group established a set of strategies. The primary strategy was to capture people’s attention with a humorous and
stylistic hook; rather than the usual approach of marketing the library’s services themselves, we wanted to use curiosity to encourage community members to visit our website or the building. Our librarians are incredibly
dedicated and well-‐trained, and do a wonderful job of identifying what people want or need and showing them how to access these services; likewise, our website is designed to do much the same in digital space. The
marketing campaign served to connect these potential patrons to well-‐designed existing resources; in the colloquial phrasing of Ben Bizzle, we needed to “sell the sizzle, not the steak, but deliver a damn good steak.” To
this end, the creative team knew the campaign needed to have the following attributes: 1. A simple, clean design
2. Consistent style choices and branding 3. Language and imagery patterned after that of social media to speak our target audience
4. A presence on platforms that placed our message in the mediums our community already use The result of this strategic plan was “Meme Your Library,” and the campaign ran from March 2012 to December
2012. The campaign has been incredibly successful, allowing us to reach all short-‐term objectives and paving the way to reach our long-‐term goals through future marketing campaigns. The library was able to accomplish this
with $40,000, 1.38% of the library’s total operating budget. Three-‐quarters of the creative team’s total budget covered the necessary staff time, and the remaining $10,000 paid for materials—most of this was spent on
billboard leasing, with a small portion spent on in-‐house printing costs. The return on this investment has been a 21st century marketing campaign for our 21st century library.
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II. Implementation and Creativity After identifying what CCJPL needed to communicate to our audience and how we wanted to do so, the
creative team implemented the “Meme Your Library” campaign. Print materials for this campaign were styled after the popular internet e-‐card design: a humorous statement and accompanying drawing on a pastel
background. This proved to be the perfect design for our strategic plan: it was simple in its composition, flexible enough to be used multiple times without becoming stale, and familiar and relevant to our social-‐media savvy
target demographic. All print materials for the campaign were branded in the lower corner with only our library book logo and website address. This choice served to not only keep the design clean and simple but also direct
potential patrons to our website as the portal for library materials and services. Our first campaign component was a series of four different billboards focused on general library awareness located in and around the Jonesboro,
Arkansas area. We continued with a series of posters to promote specific library events (such as the summer concert series, movie viewings, Star Wars Reads Day, etc.) that were placed in restaurants, bars, and stores around
the community. These same images were also printed on postcard size cardstock with additional information on the back for in-‐house distribution. The final part of the print campaign was a series of posters for our stacks that
matched the content of each fiction or nonfiction section—these 22 posters inform browsers what genre is on each aisle, provide humor, and serve to visually link the inside of the library building to marketing efforts online
and in our community. The digital distribution arm of “Meme Your Library” proved to be just as compelling in terms of community response. We posted all of the print materials on our library Facebook page; in addition, we
created a series of original cover photos which used a variety of internet meme styles (including, but not limited to, the e-‐card) and served as special content for our Facebook fans. These posts were liked and shared thousands
of times and acted as community conversation pieces. “Meme Your Library” was a comprehensive public awareness campaign that used physical and digital platforms to share eye-‐catching and humorous images that
captured our community’s attention. In order to create this high volume of e-‐cards, the creative team met for at least two hours every week to
brainstorm and hone ideas. The team is comprised of five library employees: Ben Bizzle, Joe Box, Valerie Carroll, Melloney Dunlap, and Brandi Hodges. Each person would bring five ideas to the meetings, which served as a
rather brutal vetting process; the most commonly made comment around the meeting table was usually, “No, that sucks.” Humor is difficult enough, and our campaign was designed to be edgy, to inhabit the liminal space
between material that was safe and material that was offensive. The team discussed each idea to determine how our audience would react to it; any that contained a kernel of possibility then went through a process of thorough
analysis for word choice and syntax. We had to cut many excellent ideas for being too offensive, too safe, too esoteric, or too awkwardly worded. Finally, the team set guidelines for the art for each surviving e-‐card idea.
Once a solid plan for the e-‐cards was set, Melloney began designing them. We used some free clip art for early posters, but decided that we would prefer to use original art for the remainder of the campaign in the interest of
continuity. Melloney drew some of the art, and we contracted an additional twelve drawings from three local artists who were paid $25 per piece. Aside from the billboards, we printed all materials in-‐house. Because the
library already had many of the resources needed to create this campaign—a scanner, a poster-‐size color printer, desktop publishing software, and a full-‐time graphic designer—“Meme Your Library” was inexpensive to
implement. The key to its success was having a dedicated team who set a strategic plan with sound principles and took the necessary time to not only be creative but also ensure that all ideas for the campaign served the purpose
of speaking to our audience and reaching community awareness goals. Moreover, other libraries could replicate this process, even with a more limited budget (perhaps by forgoing billboards and using only printed posters), by
investing in some basic software and hardware, capitalizing on the creativity of existing staff, and dedicating staff time to the public awareness project. The creative team’s initial assumption that our community would respond
well to a communication campaign that appealed to their senses of humor and style has been borne out by the results, and it would be exciting to see this process work for another institution.
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III. Evaluation
In beginning this public awareness campaign for our library, we knew that we would be communicating with our patrons in a completely new way. Rather than marketing particular services, we were marketing the
whole concept of the library in order to increase usage of both digital and physical services. Furthermore, the tone we adopted during this campaign was far less direct than previous marketing projects—it is the rhetorical distance
between a billboard that says, “Borrow Books for Free” and one that says, “We’re Stacked.” By engaging our community in a new way, we not only revitalized their interest in the library, but also convinced them to visit our
mobile website, download free music, text us reference questions, and, of course, visit the library building and check out books.
The “Meme Your Library” campaign has been a resounding success for CCJPL in terms of increasing the library’s community visibility and encouraging library use. Our promotional strategy allowed us to meet all of our
outreach goals and has paved the way for future marketing efforts. We recorded increases in usage and participation for both the digital library and all physical library programs and services. Our main objective, to
increase community awareness of the library, is evaluated through increases in new patrons and physical visits in 2012. Last year, CCJPL issued 8,456 new library cards, a 17.5% increase from 2011. We had a large increase in foot
traffic as well: the yearly door count for 2011 was 480,440 and this rose 16% with 557,148 visits in 2012. These increases inside the library building were more than mirrored online; in 2011, we recorded 11,529 mobile website
visits, and this increased 118% in 2012 with 25,162 visits. Another focus of the “Meme Your Library” campaign was to increase usage of the digital library, and we did so with dramatic increases in service counts. In 2012, we
recorded 30,807 Overdrive downloads (158% increase from 11,955 in 2011), and 22,705 Freegal downloads (104% increase from 11,135 in 2011). By approaching our community in a different way and promoting the library with a
sense of style and humor, we were able to encourage more people to visit the building and use the digital library. In addition to increasing the number of people using the library for educational and entertaining media,
our marketing campaign also encouraged more people to participate directly with the library. We felt more community interaction—whether people were attending a free Zumba class in the building or liking our posts on
Facebook, they participated in record numbers in 2012. For example, our longstanding summer concert series averaged over 400 attendees per concert, a 101% increase from 2011. Other library events—whether established,
like our Lunch n’ Learn series, or new to us, such as our first interactive murder mystery—demonstrated this same trend in attendance. In addition to increased participation in library events, we also registered our highest ever
volume of social media interactions with patrons in 2012. Last year, we added 3,967 fans to CCJPL’s Facebook page, and we have 8,527 total fans at the time of this submission, which represents roughly 8% of our service
population. One of our creative team’s long-‐term goals is to have one-‐quarter of our community members as Facebook fans, and the growth in the last year as a result of “Meme Your Library” has set us on that path. By
creating funny Facebook cover photos and posting not only information about library events but also entertaining pictures and videos, we use the images and language of the online world to become part of our patrons’ digital
lives. We know we have made a positive impact in our community as a result of our marketing efforts: people are more aware of what we can offer them, and they are definitely talking about the campaign. Library visitors
mention seeing the billboards and posters around town and often tell us which one is their favorite. In the future, we plan to display the entire “Meme Your Library” campaign for the public. CCJPL is encouraged by these
overwhelmingly positive results, and the creative team is working on a new campaign that builds on these successes and refines our marketing strategy. Through this process, we have discovered that the combination of
innovation and strategic planning that our creative team is capable of delivering has allowed us not only to approach our community in a new and exciting way, but also to encourage them to re-‐envision the library as a vital
