Library Marketing Campaign Study

If you haven't read Marketing Before Opening San José's Dual-Purpose Library by Spenser Thompson (Marketing Library Services, November/December 2004) I recommend that you do so. This article examines the myriad of marketing plans that a marketing team undertook in order to plan the grand opening of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, the "only co-managed, city-­academic library in the nation."

This team covered all the bases. Their marketing tactics included: running advertising slides at local movie houses; putting cards on buses and posters at public transportation sites, city offices, and community centers; and placing on-air public service announcements (PSAs) and articles in the San José Mercury News. Additional tactics included "an e-mail campaign to K-12 school district communications liaisons at the close of the 2002/03 academic year announcing the upcoming opening; articles in campus and alumni publications as well as in newsletters for city employees and city residents; colorful 90-foot street banners placed downtown; and invitations sent out to 6,000 librarians, educators, and other community and business leaders statewide."

Media relations activities included placing a series of seven PSAs enacting various uses of the library and non-English communications, such as spot interviews on the Spanish-language Telemundo network.

The marketing team also undertook a massive internal communications campaign involving in-service programs every 6 months, a "shadowing program" letting public and university librarians observe each other's work, surveys, milestone celebrations, and staff input sessions.

Want to know more? Read the article.

Oh and for those who are wondering, I don't have any great excuses for why I haven't updated this blog in 18 days. Well, I have some good ones, but I won't bore you with them. Hopefully this blog still has a reader or two left. Although, I'm not entirely convinced there was a reader or two to begin with. *grin*