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Once the Opening General Session Got Underway…

By Kathy Dempsey on July 12, 2009 in CIL2010

ALA President Jim Rettig Officially Opened the Conference on Saturday Evening.

Once the Opening session got down to business, ALA President Jim Rettig took the stage. He mentioned a number of initiatives of this year’s show, including Friday’s Unconference, 10 Grassroots programs, and the Text an Ambassador Q&A service. He spoke fondly of Dr. E. J. Josey, who recently passed away, saying he “acted as librarians’ conscience.” Rettig also mentioned the launch of the “@yourlibrary” site for the public. Rettig bestowed a few awards, the most notable being recently deceased ALA champion Judith Krug being named an Honorary Member.

After this shorter-than-usual awards portion of the program, Rettig introduced the keynote speaker, Christie Hefner, who ran her father’s Playboy Enterprises for many years. Hefner opened by saying that Chicago is her hometown, and that she had worked with ALA and the Freedom to Read Foundation for years. She also mentioned Judith Krug, saying she was “blessed to have had her as a friend.”

Hefner then launched into her talk about how time has transformed brands, societal norms, women’s rights, the media, television, and more. She offered a few juicy facts, such as these:

Today, there are more people working for woman-owned companies than for Fortune 500 companies.
The top 10 jobs we’ll need in 5 years are jobs that probably didn’t exist 5 years ago.

Christie Hefner talks about social transformation.

As we know, “mass media” has transformed into “personal media.” And she asked, what does privacy mean in this new world, where information is being shared in ways that many people don’t even realize? Individual freedom, Hefner declared, needs to coexist with privacy.

I enjoyed one of her last statements about the ideals of freedom and privacy: They may not be universally applied, but they are universally aspired to.

When Hefner finished and Rettig dismissed the crowd, it was only 6:30. The session was scheduled to go until 7 p.m., and this was the first time I can recall it being over this early. I also noted the absence of lengthy award presentations and life retrospectives at the beginning, and the fact that this was the smallest crowd I can remember ever seeing at an Opening General Session. I’m not sure how much of this shift was by design. I wonder whether ALA might someday make this important but impersonal event more palatable by live-streaming it to headquarters hotels and posting it on its website. The big TV-type cameras are already there, filming it to project onto the huge screens so everyone can see the stage. IMHO, it wouldn’t hurt to let people who chose to somehow watch it from more comfortable surroundings. Maybe this would be another way to make mass media into personalized media.

~Kathy Dempsey

Editor, Marketing Library Services newsletter

As the Opening General Session Began…

By Kathy Dempsey on July 12, 2009 in CIL2010

The stage glowed before the Opening General Session began.

I got to the Opening General Session early and was met by a stage that was more dramatic than it had been in years past. A wavy background had colors projected on it, and it was glowing an eerie red at first.

Then at promptly 5:30, when the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus took the stage to welcome the attendees with a few songs, the multi-colored background matched their multi-colored shirts.

~Kathy Dempsey

Editor, Marketing Library Services newsletter

A bright and welcoming stage!

How Service Organizations Can Assist Libraries

By Kathy Dempsey on July 11, 2009 in CIL2010

Moderator Yolanda Cuesta (left) and panelists (L-R) Coleman, Fullum Stovall, Brey-Casiano, and Ford explained how their service clubs work and how they can help libraries by providing support, manpower, and money.

I was especially interested in the session titled Partnering With Service Organizations, since I give talks about community partnerships. This LLAMA PRMS session revealed some of the inner workings of service organizations and how they can help to fund and / or complete library projects.

The panel of four speakers each talked about an organization she belongs to, and each provided a handout of org info.

Carol Brey-Casiano talked about Rotary International, the world’s first service club, which boasts more than 1.2 million members worldwide. Its mission to serve others, to promote “high ethical standards,” and to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace, has a lot in common with the values of librarians, Brey-Casiano said. She also stressed its international reach and told listeners how it helped her learn valuable leadership skills.

Melody Coleman discussed her activities with the Lions Club and explained that while the Lions engage in a number of service activities, it focuses on helping those who have trouble with their eyesight. The fact that it helps pay for eye exams and glasses ties in with libraries’ literacy efforts – once a person can see, he or she can read. Lions have also funded large-print and Braille collections.

Sylverna Ford explained that the Kiwanis Club’s mission centers around enhancing communities by enhancing the lives of children. She said that the club’s weekly meetings give her great access to community leaders.

Pamela Fullum Stovall educated the audience about Altrusa, which began largely to help build the professional lives of women but now also focuses a lot on literacy, making it a natural partner for libraries. Altrusa often helps raise money and donate books for libraries.

Panel moderator Yolanda Cuesta talked briefly about Soroptimist International, which supports the needs of women and children.

All speakers agreed that their groups existed to help serve and fund local needs, and that the proposed projects do not always have to be strongly related to the organizations’ specialties. It’s smart to use your strategic plan to decide which organizations would be right to help you meet your goals. The process of applying for funds from these groups is much less tedious and formal than those necessary to apply for many corporate or national grants. And they offer more than funding — members often volunteer their time for chosen service projects as well. And while all the panelists emphasized that you do not have to be a member to approach the groups for assistance, it sure doesn’t hurt. Finally, it’s very worthwhile to be a member, not only to have the camaraderie of local movers and shakers, but also to have their support and understanding, and to grow from the experience of belonging.

~Kathy Dempsey

editor, Marketing Library Services newsletter

Hitting their Targets

By Kathy Dempsey on July 11, 2009 in CIL2010

Peter Persic and Marcia Schneider

I started my Saturday with a good session called Targeted Marketing: Hitting the Bull’s Eye, which was sponsored by PLA. (Nod to earlier post on Alphabet Soup: this one stands for Public Library Assn.) I was glad to see a session on this important topic, although the info presented wasn’t so much about dividing people into target markets as it was case studies about how the two speakers reached certain groups they had already decided to promote to.

The large room was packed as Peter Persic, PR & Marketing Director from the Los Angeles PL, started his case study. He gave four basic steps for reaching a target market:

1. Identify your problem / situation
2. Identify your solution
3. Assemble a team
4. Develop a creative brief

I’d never heard of a “creative brief” before, but it was simply a name Persic used for a write-up of parts of a marketing plan – naming the goal & the audience, doing a SWOT analysis, designing your message, and deciding how to measure success.

In this case, the LAPL had replaced a number of old buildings with new ones, and the organization needed to let people know about all the new libraries had to offer. Luckily, a well-connected colleague was able to get PR giant Ogilvy to create a campaign pro-bono. After sharing all their info with Ogilvy, the firm decided to show off the new face of LAPL with a series of photos featuring the tagline, “This is your library.” Short and to the point, the words hover over photos of people and things that the public might not expect to see in a library, such as an espresso machine and a librarian with pink hair.

While Persic showed slides of these attention-getting posters, the actual campaign has not yet launched (they’re hoping to do it this autumn). He said that LAPL hadn’t yet worked out exactly how it planned to evaluate the campaign’s success, but polls and news monitoring were on the table.

The next presenter, Marcia Schneider, is Chief of Communications, Collections, and Adult Services for the San Francisco PL. In similar fashion to her co-presenter, she discussed a “branch library improvement program” that included 27 branches. I like the way she described the old buildings that SFPL replaced. Rather than just saying they were outdated or in poor condition, she said that (aside from just one that was completely new) the last time the organization had built a new branch was “the year we put a man on the moon.” That was a good example of how to use popular culture references to make a statement of need more powerful.

And while I was eager to hear more about how the library created a campaign to target its constituents, it turned out that SLPL also had the good fortune of using Ogilvy. In this case, the firm developed a new color scheme, brochures, and website.

While both of these projects were impressive, they didn’t deliver quite what I had thought they would in terms of explaining to the audience just how to successfully target specialized audiences. If only all libraries could manage to have professional firms figure it out for them! Sigh…

~Kathy Dempsey

Editor, Marketing Library Services newsletter

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