Who was your Harry Potter?

The NY Times blog has really hit a nerve... take a look at all the people talking about their favorite books! Already over 1,000 comments in just a few hours! Go here and enter your favs!

Turning lemons into....

From the NY Times...


Umpqua Bank, an Oregon bank famous for nontraditional marketing and customer service, has created a clever summer campaign to promote its services to small businesses: it is offering children a kit and start-up capital to set up and run a lemonade stand.

Dubbed "the lemonaire," the campaign is aimed at children in the 96 cities in Oregon, Washington and California where Umpqua operates 144 branches. Lani Hayward, executive vice president of creative strategies for Umpqua, said 70 percent of the bank's deposits and loans came from small and medium-size businesses.

Ray Davis, president and chief executive of Umpqua Bank, a subsidiary of Umpqua Holdings, said: "Umpqua is always looking for ways to recognize and support the entrepreneurial spirit that drives community growth. Giving kids lemonade stand supplies and start-up capital is a fun and unexpected way to express our support of small business and community."

Mr. Davis, who joined Umpqua in 1994, has overseen the bank's growth from $150 million in deposits to more than $7 billion today, driven in part by acquisitions. Under his leadership, Umpqua has revamped its marketing strategy, and today considers itself a retailer rather than a bank; in fact, it refers to its branches - which offer attractions like free Wi-Fi access, Umpqua-branded coffee, sewing groups, yoga classes and movie nights - as stores, and sends its employees to training sessions run by Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Resorts.

Will Harry Potter live or die?

From The Publicity Hound, great idea for libraries to get onboard with the Potter publicity...

Here's a great publicity idea for book clubs, libraries, book
stores, author groups or any organization that relates in any way
to books or reading.

Offer predictions on how you think "Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows" will end. It's the last book in the record-breaking by
author J.K. Rowling.

The article asks whether Rowling could kill off Harry Potter
"without devastating her audience, many of whom are young
children."

Hmmmmm. Sounds to me like child psychiatrists and even day care
centers could piggyback onto this story with their own
commentary.

Start pitching to your local newspapers and even TV stations.
Don't forget the bloggers who might be interested in this story.
And how about writing a press release offering your predictions?
Post it online for all the world to find.

Museums and Libraries ... perfect together

From Stephen Abrams....

Beginning July 3, Toronto Public Library users can borrow a Sun Life Financial Museum and Arts Pass, in the same way they can borrow a book or CD from the collection. The pass provides full admission to a family of up to two adults and five children to the Art Gallery of Ontario and at least four other Toronto cultural institutions.... I hear more museums and art galleries are going to be added too.

Wow.

Norma Blake invites NJ libraries to join Blue Ribbon Task Force

Norma Blake, State Librarian, has instituted a "Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Future" to continue the groundbreaking work begun by the Mid-Atlantic Library Futures Conference. The State Library recognizes that it is imperative to have input from the people who are shaping the future of New Jersey's libraries.

This is an open invitation to anyone currently working in a New Jersey library who has an interest in the future of libraries to apply for a possible appointment to the Task Force. The Task Force will comprise members from different types of libraries and from different job titles. Applications will be reviewed by a panel selected by the State Librarian and appointments made following the review process. The goal of the Task Force will be to make recommendations about how libraries can respond in the future to the information received at the conference and the challenges presented. How can local libraries and the State Library respond to projected demographic changes, growing diversity, an aging population, and technological advances?

We expect that this task force will require a short-term commitment. It is expected that the task force will meet once a month for six months, beginning September 2007, culminating in a report to the State Librarian by March 2008. The report will be presented at the April 2008 NJLA Conference.

If you are interested in serving on this panel, please complete page two of the application which can be found at https://mail01.palsplus.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.njstatelib.org/News/Blue%2520Ribbon%2520Panel.pdf and return it by August 15, 2007 to:

Peggy Cadigan
Consultant for Innovation and Communication
New Jersey State Library
185 West State Street
P.O. Box 520
Trenton, New Jersey 08625-0520

You may send the application as a word document e-mail attachment or fax it to: 609-633-3963.
Contact Peggy Cadigan with any questions. 609-278-2640, Ext. 113 or 609-292-4161, pcadigan@njstatelib.org

Dewey... not

Check out the NY Times article about Arizon's non-dewey library here.

"GILBERT, Ariz. — Trying to build popularity, many public libraries across the country have been looking more like big chain bookstores, offering comfortable easy chairs, coffee bars and displays of the latest best sellers.


But the new library in this growing Phoenix suburb has gone a step further. It is one of the first in the nation to have abandoned the Dewey Decimal System of classifying books, in favor of an approach similar to that at Barnes & Noble, say, where books are shelved in “neighborhoods” based on subject matter.

It was Harry Courtright, director of the 15-branch Maricopa County Library District, who came up with the idea of a Dewey-less library. The plan took root two years ago after annual surveys of the district’s constituency found that most people came to browse, without a specific title in mind.

“The younger generation today is wired differently than people in my generation,” said Mr. Courtright, 69. “What that tells me is we as librarians have to look at how we present materials that we have for them the way they want it.”

So at the 24,000-square-foot Perry Branch, there is not a hint of a card catalog. (Mr. Courtright says most people do not know what the numbers mean anyway.) Visitors may instead search for books using an automated computer system, which classifies them by subject and author. Up to 50 items can be taken out, in a manner similar to self-checkout at a supermarket. And reference materials are just a click away in the computer databases.

Further, though the branch is part of a new high school, the atmosphere is not of a kind generally associated with much research. At its center are not books, or computers, or even a reference desk, but rather a cluster of pastel-colored couches and chairs. And while even chain bookstores still put out classics like “Jane Eyre,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Moby Dick” for summer display, at Perry such books have taken a back seat to Paris Hilton’s “Confessions of an Heiress,” a children’s book by the New York Yankee catcher Jorge Posada and Chris Gardner’s “Pursuit of Happyness.”

Great templates to market online resources

Just found the templates Proquest designed to help libraries market their online resources. Really good and very easy to use. Take a look here.

Show me the women

There's a great article in the NY Times, "Women Build Businesses Their Way", rich in marketing inspiration, about an ideal target audience for libraries. Read the article and you too will become inspired.

We know from our own experiences that most women go about building a business from the heart and soul then integrate the growth in their life between all the other things they already have going. Businesses plans and budgets usually come along somewhere down the road... sometimes toward the very end of the road. But what struck me about this article was the idea that libraries could serve as a great place to network BUT and this is a really important part- we would need to stage the meetings to be conducive to the kind of networking that makes women comfortable. And that means making it hip, chic so speak.

Years ago my husband and I ran a little poet/songwriter coffee house in the local art gallery. Working on a shoestring budget we went out and bought inexpensive, but nice sized coffee mugs; cut butcher paper into squares, draped it over tables and provided felt tipped pens so artists cold draw or write notes as they listened. The finishing touch were small bits of clay with a flower or two. We created an atmosphere that matched the mood for the event. It worked - people felt comfortable and creative.

The best performance I ever went to was to hear Ellis Paul in a library but I have to tell you, I had to close my eyes to block out the atmosphere because it was such a stark room. Atmosphere is everything.... how do you think romantic dinner by candlelight got such a great rap? :-)

Women like nice things and giving gifts...
So getting back to marketing to women. Women like "nice things" and we like to buy trophies ( t-shirts for the kids, mugs for ourselves, etc...) that means we prefer to drink out of mugs not paper cups ( so go ahead and order "Ladies that Launch" coffee mugs for your group and then sell them to cover the cost. Get a great t-shirt design so your women will buy them to workout in or give them to the kids for sleeping or at the beach. We also like to buy things that have funny sayings on them for our husbands (t-shirts?) and we love to buy cards and gifts for our friends (get a few card designs to put into your library's store and sell those t-shirt "buy one, get one half off"). Why am I encouraging you to get into the retail end of selling items? Because part of marketing requires you to create a well designed product that people want. Most libraries can't afford to buy nice looking mugs or t-shirts as give-a-ways but you can sell a product and then use the profits to sustain the freebies. It gives you the money to brand your programs and makes them appealing plus it puts your message where you need it.

But coffee mugs and t-shirts alone will not make the atmosphere. Women like creativity. Forget the big "Hello my name is..." name tags. Get some art paper and stamps and create attractive pins where the women can write their names.

Introduce, introduce, introduce....
Instead of greeting people with a sign up table, welcome them with an offer to get them a cup of coffee and then when you return with the coffee ask them if they'd like a name tag. As the crowds grow you can ask others to help the new comers find the badges or show them where the coffee is.... in other words start thinking of your events as social events.

Ditch the calories ...
Have food but for goodness sake, ditch the cakes and cookies. Sure we love them but women want to be about health and fitness and your affairs need to reflect that thinking- high energy power bars, find the newest products that give energy and low calories. Comfort foods are great but they are usually unhealthy- you are creating a group that is looking to move ahead, improve their lives, etc... make the whole experience reflect that thinking.

Nourish the seedlings ...
Anticipate that beginning meetings will be small numbers and host them in a nook rather than a big room. Plan to have successful women speak (still in a coffee table environment- no podiums please), plant people make sure you hand pick some mavens (read Tipping Point) and keep the meetings short. Grow them from seedlings and let the group grow the meetings as they grow.

Keep inviting ...
Have the circulation staff invite people they meet at the desk who are reading business books- have the invitations printed on postcards and keep them clever and in brand. At different stages, bring in various authors... again keep it intimate- let the women meet the authors personally - you will be creating experiences that will inspire these women and they will want to share the groups with their friends.... that is the beauty of good marketing, we get others to do it for us.. free.




library marketing

Smart ads are here

We've head about them but now Yahoo is launching tests for this one-on-one marketing. See NY Times article here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/technology/02yahoo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"Yahoo will announce new tools for online advertising today that could pull the company ahead in the race for what is called “behavioral targeting,” that is, the ability to better tailor online advertisements to the people most likely to buy.

The product, Yahoo SmartAds, would help marketers create custom advertisements on the fly, using information on individual buyers and information on real prices and availability from the vendors. For example, a person who had recently searched for information about blenders might see an ad from Target that gives the prices for the blenders that are on the shelves in the store closest to that person’s home.... This is how Yahoo’s new system works: the advertiser (or its agency) would provide Yahoo with the components of its display ads — including the logos, tag lines and images. The retailer would share information from its inventory databases that track the items on the shelves in each of its stores. Next, Yahoo would combine that data with the information it has about its users’ demographics and actions online to create a product-specific advertisement." -NY TImes

ALA pictures are posted

I've posted my pictures. Neat shots of Robert Kennedy Jr. Ted Kennedy and Ken Burns along with others.... here.