Super Radical Food For Fines Guidelines !! #library

Posted on by pcsweeney

Food For Fines
Food for Fines
Its the time of year that many libraries are promoting a food-for-fines campaign and I wanted to make sure I had my little say in the matter. I didn’t realize how passionate some people are about how radical these guidelines were until I posted this on a listserv and got some really angry emails back!! But, I have noticed some kinds of craziness with the rules and obligations put forth in the campaigns that I really have a problem with so I’m putting my little thoughts and experiences out there.

Here are the guidelines we put forth at my previous library:

1) Materials had to be returned to get the overdue charges removed, I.E. no paying for lost/missing/damaged items with food as we would have pay to replace the item anyway.

2) Food couldn’t be expired or damaged and it had to be non-perishable

So, if you returned your items (no matter how late) with some food (no matter how much) we would wave your fines. We got so many materials returned with a can of food or two that I can’t imagine what we saved in the cost of re-ordered and re-processed materials. Also, it was fantastic PR!

Sure, some people returned their materials with a package of Ramen Noodles and got 20-30 dollars of fines waived, but we got the material back, we got the food, and got the patron to come back to the library. Really it was a WIN, WIN, WIN situation. I would also like to point out that for every person who brought in 1 package of ramen noodles or the like, we got people who didn’t owe fines bringing in food for the local community pantry that we were donating the food to and we also got people bringing in WAY more food than their fines were worth. I can’t figure out a bad angle to look at this from, and I tried!

Also I am reading that there are quite a few libraries saying 1 can of food is equal to one dollar in fines. I just got back from the grocery store and I don’t think I saw any cans of food that were only 1 dollar. This might make it even harder for some folks to bring materials back, or donate. I think we have to focus on what the goals of the program are. For us it was;

1) Get materials back so we don’t have to re-purchase/process them.
2) Have the patron come back to the library.
3) Gain some positive PR and build up our social capital.
4) Do some good.

I think we achieved it all! The campaign was an astounding success, we got thousands of food items, and hundreds of items returned that we might not have gotten, and we got some great press! Good job team!

Branding Libraries: Final Steps- Live the Message! – Measurements – Conclusion – references

Posted on by pcsweeney

Live the Message

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.

References

Allbusiness (2006). What is a brand? Retrieved November 17, 2006 from
http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/branding-brand-
development/416-1.html

Chominskey, Dennis (2002) Cyberbranding essentials. Retrieved November 13, 2006
from http://www.phptr.com/articles/article.asp?p=30023&rl=1

Dempsey, B (2004). Target your brand. Library Journal

Gobe, M. (2001), Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to
People. New York: Allworth Press.

Hendry, C (2006). Create your own brand. Wards Dealer Business

How to create a logo (2006). Retrieved on November 10, 2006 from
http://www.hotwebdesigntalk.com/logo-brand-identity/8-how-create-logo.html

Kirkendall, C. A. (1986) Of Princess Di, Richard Dawson, and the Book Review Digest
Research Strategies

Kranich, N. (2001). ALA at your library. Retrieved on November 13, 2006) from
https://cs.ala.org/@yourlibrary/nancymessage.cfm.

Lindstrom, M (2005). Brand Sense; Build powerful brands through touch, taste, smell,
sight and sound. New York; Free Press

Muniz, A. M. O’Guinn, T. C. (April, 2001) Brand Community. Journal of Consumer
Research

Roberts, K. (2004), Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands. New York: Powerhouse
Books

Schau, H. J. ( March, 2005) Religiosity in the abandoned. Journal of Consumer
Research

Walker, S. Lawson, L. V. (1993)MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media
Librarianship, v1 no.1, Spring 1993:16-28

Underhill, P. (1999) Why we buy; The science of shopping. New York, Simon and
Schuster

All Previous Library Branding Posts

Branding Libraries: Step 1 – Defining Branding

Branding Libraries: Step 2 – A Brand Audit

Branding Libraries: Step 3 – Quality Products/Services

Branding Libraries: Step 4 – Library’s Brand Distinction

Branding Libraries: Step 5 – Owning a Phrase 

Branding Libraries: Step 6 – Tapping into Emotion 

Branding Libraries: Step 7 – Building the Libraries Brand Image

Branding Libraries: Step 8 – Advertise the image

Branding Libraries: Final Steps- Live the Message! – Measurements – Conclusion

Branding Libraries: Step 6 – Tapping into Emotion

Posted on by pcsweeney

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.

All Library Branding Posts

Branding Libraries: Step 1 – Defining Branding

Branding Libraries: Step 2 – A Brand Audit

Branding Libraries: Step 3 – Quality Products/Services

Branding Libraries: Step 4 – Library’s Brand Distinction

Branding Libraries: Step 5 – Owning a Phrase 

Branding Libraries: Step 6 – Tapping into Emotion 

Branding Libraries: Step 7 – Building the Libraries Brand Image

Branding Libraries: Step 8 – Advertise the image

Branding Libraries: Final Steps- Live the Message! – Measurements – Conclusion