First, let me say that I absolutely love the idea of libraries following a bookstore model so I’m already coming from a biased opinion. I think that, in general, libraries have a lot to learn from all retail businesses about getting our resources off our shelves and into the hands of our patrons. In fact, I would even go so far as to relate an item circulating in libraries making a sale in retail. It seems to me that having the objective of increasing the number our library materials coming off of our shelves in an efficient manner is the same thing that retail stores are attempting to do with their sales. If that’s true, and a library wants to increase its circulation or its “sales” maybe I should just start calling the circulation of library materials, library sales?
There are, of course, quite a few differences between library materials and retail products. For example, people have to return a library item and the item is owned by
Are we increasing Circulation or Sales?
the people of the community as whole through the government purchase and distribution of it. The item can be “re-sold” a multitude of times and people only pay for the item if it is lost, damaged, or returned late. We try not to let the market dictate too fully about which items are purchased. And I’m not suggesting that we are competing with bookstores or retail markets because I think we serve fundamentally different purposes. But really, I think that the actual process of getting the item off the shelf and into the hands of the patron is the same as making a sale and many of the techniques of making more successful sales can be applied to increasing circulation.
In the end, I don’t think that anything would really change about the actual circulation of library materials by simply calling it a new name except that we might begin to look at circulation in a new way and our “sales” would hopefully increase. By renaming the process we might look more closely at the vast number of more refined techniques that retail stores (not just bookstores) use to get their products into the hands of the people in their places of business. Perhaps by simply renaming the movement of the library materials we will get librarians to start thinking about using some of those techniques more often. So maybe from now I won’t “check out books,” instead I’ll “make sales.”
Remember the brand name is also a promise about the library’s services to the community. Because of this that promise can never be broken. It must be shown through not only the brand image, the logo, the advertising, but also through the person-to-person interactions with the public while they are in the library. Any action that takes place in the library where a customer interacts with a librarian is an example of the pledge to maintain the promise of the library services. This means that every librarian on duty at all times must fully understand what the brand image that the library is attempting to project is and work every time with every customer to continue telling the story of the brand to the customer. By understanding that the staff has the ability to make or break the brand (as shown with the Abercrombie example earlier) they can make better decisions about their interactions with the patrons.
Measures and Measurements
Once the brand has been established and the plan is put into effect the job becomes one of continuously measuring the brand’s equity against that of the competitions and against itself. This measurement can be done through a number of ways. It can be accomplished through a variety of market research methods such as conducting market surveys, studying the sustainability of the library brand, and conducting focus group research to get an idea about the public’s perception of the library in their community. If it is found that the results of the measures are not the same as the library would like then the process becomes one of measuring the weakest areas for possible improvements and making adjustments in order to make those improvements. This is an ongoing and continuous process for the maintenance of the brand’s image and should not stop once the measures produce the desired results. If the desired results are found then the measurements must continue so that any noticeable slippage in the opinions of the public can be acted upon immediately to re-improve the brand’s image.
Conclusion
With a well-branded image of libraries the public can be given a sense of the importance of the library within their community. This kind of definition of image can lead to a number of benefits for the library including an increase of circulation and use as well as the potential for a renewed interest in the services of the library within the community. This in turn can lead to improved voting records for the library and eventually the potential for improved funding.
The projecting of the image of the library brand must be carried out among all contact points with the consumer. As previously mentioned this means that the logo, the brand, the ideal about the library that you are trying to communicate should be promoted at every possible customer touch point within the library itself and at meaningful contact points throughout the community such as outreach programs and services. The library floor space should be studied to find pause points where the customer stops to find direction, to make decisions, or to turn around. At these points the marketing that contains the brand image, the advertising, the message, and the logo should be put in such a place that the customers eyes are drawn to them. The marketing should not be obscured, hidden, or cluttered with other materials that could draw attention away from the customer’s connection with the brand image at the touch point. (Underhill, 1999)
It is also important that the name, logo, advertising, and all marketing communications materials consistently communicate the brand’s same homogeneous message outside the library as much as it does inside. To do so, the library must utilize the same types of marketing techniques that the other companies are using as well. The library needs to understand that the customers are continuously bombarded with marketing from every other organization. In order to maintain the library at a consistent position within the customer’s minds without being lost in the soup of other organization’s marketing, they must use some of the same avenues that the competition does. Some of these include; websites, mailings, sponsorships, partnerships, billboards, posters, business cards, commercials (radio and television if possible), and face-to-face interactions with customers whenever and wherever they are present. At these places the libraries brand and distinction from other organizations should be continuously presented.
Finally we can begin to discuss the creation of a logo, a memorable name, and maybe a tagline although the logo can be all three at once. If it is not then each of these must communicate thoroughly and concisely the essence of the library’s unique selling proposition. The logo of the library should represent everything that the library does. If we look at the business model we can find examples of logos that represent and embody the companies entire ideal. One such company is Nike with its “swoosh” that represents movement, speed, agility, and all around athleticism. In the same way the libraries logo should suggest some kind of community meaning, define the mission of the library, and set the tone for the entire company. Also, it should be understood that this logo is used to enhance the consumer’s impression of the library.
“Ideally, your company logo enhances potential customers and partners’ crucial first impression of your business. A good logo can build loyalty between your business and your customers, establish a brand identity, and provide the professional look of an established enterprise.” (How to Create a Logo, 2006)
So, how should a library begin the process of creating a logo? The first step is to look at the logos of other businesses with similar goals, missions, and commitments. For example, if we look at the logos of other book suppliers we can see that the logos are largely text based. Border’s, Amazon’s, and Barnes and Noble’s logos are all textual in nature. The logo’s communicate the name and image of those companies and they are clean and functional. By clean functional I mean that the logo is reproducible, easy to scale, it is memorable and distinct in such a way to be as recognizable on business cards as it is on a billboard on the side of the road. There are no complex graphics, clipart, or photography that take time to decipher the meaning of or understand without looking for some time. The simplicity of their logos allows them to be understood wherever they are seen no matter how long or short of time they are looked at.
This type of simplicity and usability is important in a logo because the logo should be everywhere the library products are, or wherever there is a point in the community where they could be reminded of the library. For example, if we continue to look at corporate bookstores as the model brands we will notice that while in the stores we are continuously surrounded by brand images. The logo is on the books, it is on the bags, the walls, windows, signs, outside of the store, in fact it is on every possible customer touch-point. This is what connects the company to the logo of the brand and through the brand to the customers.
Since the logo should be everywhere library patrons are it is important to understand that in many places this logo is the “face” of the library. In other words the logo must do a number of things. The first, and perhaps most obvious is that the since brand image must remain constant to keep from telling a confusing story then the logo must remain constant. Second, the logo must communicate the brand story in some way. And third, it must be continuously connected to the library itself.
As pointed out earlier, perhaps one of the greatest areas of improvement would be the inclusion of emotional content in the creation of a library brand. To do this we must develop emotionally accessible attributes for the brand. This means that the brand should readily tap into the target market’s psyche and evoke an emotional response.
To look at the business model literature we can see a very large discussion of the importance of emotional branding. In fact, “over the last decade, emotional branding has emerged as a highly influential brand management paradigm” (Gobe, 2001). This is in large part because connecting the products to the emotions of the consumers creates a more experiential experience of the product. By doing so the consumers connect to the product and the product itself becomes a part of the consumer’s identity. Therefore, for a consumer to leave to brand would now mean that the consumer loses a sense of identity. In this way “emotional branding is a consumer-centric, relational, and story-driven approach to forging deep and enduring affective bonds between consumers and brands” (Roberts 2004).
The idea of the library as a community driven organization can actually work to benefit the creation of the brand identity. This is because “proponents of emotional branding proclaim that this high degree of consumer passion is seldom, if ever, cultivated through rational arguments about tangible benefits or even appeals to symbolic benefits, such as heightened self-esteem or status” (Gobe 2001). Instead we see that “these potent consumer–brand linkages typically emerge when branding strategies use narratives and tactics that demonstrate an empathetic understanding of customers’ inspirations, aspirations, and life circumstances and that generate warm feelings of community among brand users (Muniz and Schau 2005).
Where better to generate warm feelings of belonging and community than within an organization that has this as its main goal. The library should be presenting in a continuous narrative to the consumers that the library is not only a community-centered organization but also that when they use the library the users are a part of the community. They belong to the community, and the library is their key to that sense of belonging. So how can this story be told?
I would argue that perhaps we can convey this message through partnerships with the community, or through partnerships with other community organizations. These partnerships would have to be with organizations with similar goals of the library such as education, community building, literacy, etc. If the library partners with organizations that do not have the same goals then it is possible that the story gets confusing or diluted and the brand identity of an organization as a place in jeopardy since the consumers will no longer understand the story being told to them through the brand story.
Next in developing a brand, a library must own a word or phrase. When we are defining our message, we are trying to own a single word or short phrase in the mind of the target market. To say “own,” I mean that no other company could ever use that slogan to mean anything else other than what we have conveyed it to mean. By analyzing the strengths of the distinctions, and by understanding the role of libraries as community organizations I might argue that a strong choice would be; “Libraries ARE the community” or “The library IS the community.” This message conveys some of the same aspects of power that Nike conveys when they say “Just Do it.” It also promotes the ideology, and the mission of the library in the same way that “The Ultimate Shopping Experience” does for the Seattle shopping center Pacific Place.
If this hypothetical phrase is the one to be used then the next step would be to be sure that it is not owned by anyone else. Or that it has ever been owned by anyone else. Obviously, if it is already in use by another organization it can’t be used because it would simply cost too much in promotions, advertising, money, time, and effort to change the meaning in the minds of the patrons to that of fitting the library. It is clear that with such a slogan as “Libraries ARE the Community” it is unlikely that it has been used by any other organizations but it is important to understand if some other slogan is what will be used. Also, if the slogan has been used in the past by an organization that lost public favor such as Enron or the like then it should not be used either. This could lead to an association with negativity and that is exactly what a brand wishes to avoid.
Whenever I see one of these videos I always wonder how I can possibly keep up without taking on learning technology as a full time job. I also wonder how libraries or other organizations are supposed to keep up without having a full time position dedicated to learning and implementing new technologies. This is not to say that every technology needs to be used or even that every technology should be used. But this video confirms my belief that organizations need to be quicker to respond to changes in technology, and a full-time staff person would be a great way to ensure that this happens.
Info about the video
“This is another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://mediaconvergence.economist.com and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.
Next libraries need to identify their brand’s distinction. This means that libraries must define their message and position while determining what it is that sets them apart from the competition. This distinction is the potentially branded product. So, to determine what the distinction is, libraries need to ask themselves; are they the first, best, most innovative, or luxurious in the category of companies performing similar functions in the community?
The First
It looks as though libraries have two services that are important to the target market. These being free access to information and also as a community centered organization. So to answer this question, I might say that actually libraries were the first at providing free access to information within a community. Having been in existence as a concept for thousands of years libraries have had very little to compete with as far as firsts in freedom of information. However, as a community centered organization libraries might not be the first or the original. There have been gathering areas within communities since the beginning of communities, whether it was the tribal fires where members would gather for stories, the Stoa where Socrates gathered members of the Greek community to teach, or any of the other millions of examples of community gathering places throughout history. So we need to recognize that while libraries are viewed in the public’s perception as places of information they still do have heavy competition for the community’s view of libraries as a first in community gathering places.
The Best
Once again libraries are the best at providing free access to information. Even with the invention of the Internet, libraries are more cost effective when quality of information is taken into account. Also, for the patrons, libraries cost nothing (outside of time) if the patron wishes to use a computer to access the Internet. Unlike a home computer that can cost thousands of dollars before access can be had, and even after this startup price there are still monthly fees the library is free no matter what the patrons financial status. So libraries are the best at providing free access to information, but how are they as a community center? This may be the libraries advantage. Although community centers have been around for thousands of years, in the current society there are very few community-centered organizations that work to provide services for the betterment of the community or as points of gathering in the community that are as good or comprehensive as the library. The library may not be a perfect community centered organization but they still may be on of the best.
Innovative
Libraries downfall may be that they might be one of the least innovative information sources available. There are a number of libraries that do not have enough (or any) of the latest technology to access or use information. With the constantly changing information age storage formats are outdated and useless at a much quicker rate. This means that libraries must continuously be innovative and keep up to date with information systems as well as being innovative in creating some of their own. On the other hand, libraries are very innovative when it comes to being a community-centered organization. They are so much so that oftentimes the successful community programs developed by the library are integrated in to private businesses such as bookstores, and after school literacy programs.
Luxury
Lastly, the luxuriousness of libraries is on the increase with such library systems as San Jose, San Francisco and Chicago. These types of systems are highly luxurious and are oftentimes destinations themselves simply because of the luxuries they offer. With this understanding of the distinctions of a library they can then continue to move to distinguish those distinctions in the minds of the patrons. By promoting the fact that libraries are the first at providing free access to information, or by selling the community empowerment of a library, they can help develop the library brand’s meaning for the patrons.
First and most importantly is that we start with a quality product. If we are to build a strong library brand then it is important that the product (the library) and our services are of the highest quality. We must also recognize that this high quality product is not enough to give libraries a brand advantage over the other organizations that may perform some of the same functions in the community such as a corporate bookstore. In fact, the high quality of products and services is simply a prerequisite to having something worth branding.
If we look at a competitor’s brand such as Borders, we notice that they do have a high quality product behind their brand. The Borders product is not books, instead the company recognizes that their customers have home and work as two integral spaces to their lives. With this recognition they are striving to create a third space for their customers away from work and home, this is their product and not books. The space is well-lit, well-organized, calming colors, easily understood rules, comfortable to sit in and rest with a good book and a cup of coffee. I’m not sure that libraries can compete in the market of creating third spaces but we don’t have to. Our role is slightly different than Borders.
I think that Kenneth Dowlin presents the formation of the product that libraries have to offer in his article “The Centrality of Communities to the Future of Major Public Libraries.” In it, states;
“The key to the future of a democratic society rests with the ability of its citizens to recreate a sense of community with common social purposes. This holds true for neighborhoods and cities as well as communities that go beyond geographic boundaries, such as those formed on the Internet. A library that meets community needs and expectations will succeed.” (Dowlin)
So then, the library’s product is the service that it provides to the community, not the contents of the library, but its function within the community. If this is true then it is important that libraries strive to become more community centered, if they are not already, as they are beginning to to form their brand image.
When attempting to brand a product or service it is important to first consider what position that product or service already has in the minds of the customers. If it has been around for a significant number of years, in the same way that libraries have, then it is possible that the public perceives it as having an already established brand. Because of this, one of the first things we should consider is that it is possible that the library is already branded. By this I mean that because libraries already convey a certain emotion, perception, and impression in the minds of the community then the community might already have a perceived inherent value placed on libraries. Since all of this is what a brand does, then the library is already branded. But a few questions arise from this. The first; what is the perception of the library in the community? The second; is this the brand image that we want to continue to convey? And the third; If not, then what can we do to change our brand image in the minds of our patrons?
Changing the Library Brand Image
To find the answer to the first question I will first look at the current brand image of the librarians themselves. Librarians convey to the public a specific set of perceptions, emotions, and impressions of the library in the same way that the workers of such companies as Abercrombie and Fitch convey that company’s brands image. When the public thinks of an individual Abercrombie and Fitch worker they generally visualize an attractive, “cool,” outgoing, tall, white male or female. In the same way, when the general public thinks of a librarian they generally visualize a very different set of attributes. I am not arguing that libraries should follow the hiring standards of Abercrombie and Fitch, but I am arguing that we need to recognize that we are branding the library without realizing it and without any attempt to control it.
So what is the brand image of a librarian? Stephen Walker and V. Lonnie Lawson discuss the stereotypes (brand image) of the public’s view of a “typical” librarian in their article The Librarian Stereotype and the Movies. In this article they found that:
‘To the general public the word “librarian” is a readily recognizable label. The label need not include those aspects of librarianship that librarians want to claim. Several years ago on the “Family Feud” game show a group of 100 people were surveyed and asked what they believed to be typical “librarian” characteristics. The top 5 Characteristics disclosed showed that librarians were:
“American Libraries” has a semi-regular column (”Image: How They’re Seeing Us”) with a quote, advertisement, cartoon, or other reflection of society’s view of the librarian. Some of these examples are positive reflections, but more often they reinforce the negative stereotype librarians repudiate.’ (1993)
When we recognize this brand representation of librarians as the norm we then must decide what characteristics of this brand we can change (or at least control) if any. If it is not possible to change the view of the librarians then perhaps we can change the public’s perceptions of the library itself. So what are the public’s perceptions of a library?
To answer that question we can see that in a letter from the ALA’s past president, Nancy Kranich, she noted that:
“In 1999, ALA contracted with BSMG Worldwide, a New York-based public-relations firm, to develop a major public-awareness campaign. BSMG’s first step was to assess public perception of libraries. Not surprisingly, they found that libraries are popular and well liked, accepted often without strong feelings or real understanding. Libraries are everywhere, rooted in nearly every school, campus, and community, but they are most visible when under siege. They noted that libraries are unique, playing a role of no other institution in our democracy, but not always able to communicate that uniqueness. And, on the negative side, they found that consumers see libraries as somewhat archaic, their resources limited and dated, and their facilities intimidating and difficult to navigate.” (Kranich, 2001)
There are a number of things to note within this quote. In fact, it points many of the positive and negative public perceptions of the library. For example, we can see that libraries are viewed as well liked, important, and integral to a community by a large percentage of the population but they still have a perception of being archaic, limited, dated, and intimidating.
Now that we recognize the current state of the library brand we can ask ourselves if this is the brand image we want to continue to cultivate or do we want to change it and begin to cultivate a very different brand? Since there are some negative perceptions of the library in a few areas I would argue that it is time to change the way we present ourselves to the public through a change in our current brand image. Finally we can ask ourselves how it is that this is accomplished or the third question as previously mentioned; what can we do to change our brand image in the minds of our patrons?
PC Sweeney 