Presentation developed for a local marketing association, MarketLansing. The purpose was to describe why the Capital Area District Libraries participated in the Geek the Library campaign from OCLC.
2. What are we talking about today?
• Understanding library supporters
• Campaign phases
• Why did we do this: CADL’s goals
• Execution
• Lessons learned
4. Library Supporters
Just for Fun – 7.1% Super
Kid Driven – 6.6% Supporters
Library as Office – 3.4% 7.1%
Look to Librarians – 6.5%
Greater Good – 8.7%
5. Library Supporters
Super
Supporters
7.1%
Financially Strapped – 10.6%
Detached – 16.0%
The Web Wins – 7.4%
6. Campaign Phases
Phase 1: Raise awareness
Phase 2: Change perceptions
Phase 3: Drive behavior
January – December 2011 January – May 2012
Phases 1 & 2 Phase 3
7. CADL’s Geek Goals
1. Use Geek as a mechanism to talk about
library funding.
2. Generate goodwill for 2014 millage effort.
3. Create more awareness about CADL. Only
about ~ 1/3 of the residents in our service
area have library cards!
8. CADL’s Geek Goals
4. Definite fit with our Strategic Plan and
2011/2012 organizational goals.
“Increase public awareness Use marketing
messages in interpersonal advocacy efforts;
everyone who works for CADL should be an
advocate.”
Very important: Board and Management buy-
in
15. Execution: Phases 1 & 2
Take the message EVERYWHERE!
•Outreach events – farmer’s markets, parent/teacher night,
etc…
•Geek parties at the libraries – GeekFest
•Traditional advertising – newspaper ads, billboards
•Posters all around town
•Newspaper columns written by librarians
•In-library displays
•#geekCADL hashtag
16. Execution: Phase 3
• Switching to Phase 3 took some careful
thought.
• Changed out messaging in all libraries
– New posters
– New ads: newspapers and billboards
– New talking points at outreach events
22. What we learned…
• For campaigns longer than 9 months, find
ways to keep staff engaged.
• Don’t let phase 3 run on auto pilot…
manage it as much as, or even more than,
phases 1 and 2.
• Make the change in messaging clear – tie to
“call to action”
Understanding lib supporters – review research that served as the foundation for the Geek campaign 3 phases to the campaign – what are they Why did CADL participate? How did we do it? What did we learn?
OCLC (Online Computer Library Center)– library consortium - conducted a large market research study to better understand people’s attitudes about/awareness of libraries. They used their findings to create this pyramid of library supporters. This research served as the foundation for the Geek campaign. Super supporters: most firmly committed to supporting a library funding initiative Probable: LIKELY to support funding initiative, but not fully committed Barriers: voters who have significant barriers to voting in favor of increased library funding Chronic non-voters: not registered to vote, or have a history of choosing not to vote in elections
So keeping all this research in mind, the overall idea behind the Geek campaign is to take some of the Probable Supporters and move them into the Super Supporters category, and/ take some of the Barriers to Support people and move them into the Probable Supporters or Super Supporters category. CADL combined phases 1 and 2… we ran the campaign for 18 months, so I organized it so we could run Phases 1 and 2 during the first 12 months. Phase 3 was the final 6 months. RAISING AWARENESS Spreading the message as far and wide as financially possible
How did we secure buy-in? Presentations to the board Reps from OCLC came to help us make the presentations. They agreed that CADL could participate, but true buy-in didn’t really come until later, when we got them involved.
Started with the “campaign” geeks
Graduated to “local” geeks – this is when the campaign really hit its stride – community began to take notice. They wanted to know who the next local geek would be. Awesome tactic if you can afford to keep up the billboard advertising!
Local geeks
The next “local” level - staff geeks
CADL Board geeks
Wanted to keep momentum going from Phases 1 and 2 But feel like we lost a bit of it – 18 months is a long time! The billboards and newspaper ads really ignited/re-ignited the community’s interest But I felt like a lot of people didn’t really get the change in messaging…they were pretty focused on the initial geek message and who are next local geek was going to be.
TV cost prohibitive For us, trade off between TV and billboards OCLC research shows billboards do a better job of getting the word out. We enlisted the help of some of the geeks we used in the first two phases…kept the same photo but they changed what they geek to fit with the messaging for Phase 3. _____ CADL’s Geek Resources: Geek The Library materials provided by OCLC In-Library displays Outreach events (business expos, farmers’ markets, etc…) CADL Website CADL Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Blog) Newspapers: ads and weekly librarian columns Billboards
For longer campaigns – anything longer than 9 months – find creative ways to keep staff motivated. We did OK with this, but could’ve done better. For phase 3, wanted to keep momentum going from Phases 1 and 2 But feel like we lost a bit of it. I felt like a lot of people didn’t really get the change in messaging…they were pretty focused on the initial geek message and who are next local geek was going to be.