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Public Library Authorities Conference, Wednesday 11th October 2006
Alex Aiken, Head of Communications, Westminster City Council
Communications properly used is a powerful tool to improve the perceptions of local libraries. Community and national profile can be build with good media relations while usage is sustained by effective marketing. This requires understanding your brand, a coherent identity and trusting the professionals with delivering a communications plan with clear outcome targets.
Libraries are loved, but not perceived as useful.
Putting the public back into public libraries is a good theme for this conference because it summarises the communications challenge.
We think that Westminster’s libraries are a case study in how to communicate.
Fundamentally this is about a decent offer to the customer. We have nearly a million books, films, CDs, language courses and talking books, as well as newspapers, magazines, local information and access to computers.
According to the annual city survey our libraries enjoy high resident satisfaction and usage, with almost 3m visits each year. Half of residents interviewed in 2005 said they had visited their library in the past six months.
However, in the UK libraries face a big challenge to compete with shifting trends towards buying rather than renting books. Bookshops like Waterstones and Blockbusters model are themselves under pressure and libraries need now to look to online retailers, such as Tesco and Amazon with convenience becoming a major determining factor.
To move libraries from being seen as a static product to a live experience, and the rest of this speech is about how you can do that.
Four principles that you’ll hear throughout this speech.
Communications properly used is a powerful tool
Profile can be build with good media relations.
But use is sustained by effective and consistent marketing.
Shifting the library brand from buildings to people; from books to knowledge is the fundamental challenge.
This is not a short term, or ‘one stop’ solution. Any useful product, and brand takes time to build and needs sustaining. You must invest in communications and market research.
First steps
Understand what you want to be famous for in the eyes of your users. Clarity of goal is essential. If you try to be all things to all men, and women, you’ll end up with a vague and fuzzy brand that will not attract customers or gain respect.
Think of great brands; Virgin, Volvo, Tesco.
People immediately understand what they’ll get. And this is not about private vs public sector.
If you consider the NHS, BBC or the Mayor of London, you’ll immediately see organisations that set out to be excellent and renown for core attributes.
Libraries need to do the same, to shift perceptions from drab buildings to a people experience. And achieve this within the context of local authority reputation, which ranges from excellent to bloody awful.
I am not going to attempt to write a brand strategy for libraries this morning. But it does seem pretty intuitive that the idea of the library as understood traditionally;
“a collection of literary documents or records kept for reference or borrowing”
must move to being seen as
“The live local source of expert information, entertainment and public discussion”
So, move the brand from an association with documents and borrowing to a place for live discussion.
And, with that the concept of the librarian has to change, and perhaps a start would be to abolish the title itself with its connotations of discipline and middle aged conservatism.
So, the task for libraries, librarians and for this conference is to start the task of repositioning, or rebuilding a library brand focused on the knowledge economy.
Communication principles
I think that the first step to understanding how to get the media message across is to understand that a few rigorously applied principles; a discipline and coherent approach to communications can make a massive difference to public perception of libraries. The LGA believes that there are a dozen communication actions that can improve satisfaction with local authorities. I would like to propose five actions that could compose a library reputation campaign.
First, challenge expectations to update the brand. If we accept that the perception is that libraries are ‘out of date’, then there should be a rigorous and consistent focus on services other than books to drive people to libraries, from as the national love libraries project demonstrates, community centres, coffee houses and IT hubs. Differentiate libraries through their ‘added extras’, modernise the library brand to demonstrate its relevance and win customers from bookshops and online retailers.
Second, deploy active public relations that makes news, delivering a story into the local or regional media each week or each month into local media or through the council’s magazine. Replace coverage in civic publications about library opening hours with news about the latest products. Take every opportunity to promote your service.
Third, focus on looking after the customer – In our experience libraries have less of a problem attracting new members, than getting them to fully utilise the library. So a critical part of our 2006-7 campaign will focus on encouraging existing members to visit more often and use of the wide range of products on offer.
Fourth, develop and maintain a consistent identity that explains that this is a public place and part of the services provided by the local council.
Finally, don’t forget the internal audience, and develop ways of attracting staff to use libraries from special sessions, to early news about new services and sales of titles that are past their shelf life. And challenge members and senior officers to make more of their libraries.
You need to see communications in the whole. There is a massive communications toolbox, different ways of reaching busy people. Media, marketing and internal communication channels. Unless you bring them all together, you are missing opportunities to pitch your serviced to customers.
How we plan communication campaigns
We don’t do publicity, we do campaigns: A connected series of activities designed to bring about a particular result.
This is what your communication department should be doing. We produce an agreed campaign plan for promoting libraries, over a period of 1-2 years
1. Agree baselines
2. Agree the strategy
3. Agree implementation tactics
4. And outcome targets
We call this ROSIE
Each service objective we agree is turned into a campaign plan, based around five stages.
Teams of communication officers are configured to ‘deliver campaign outcomes’, not ‘outputs on instruction’. Put simply, tell us what you want to achieve, not what you want on a leaflet.
This must be at the heart of your communications planning; not a series of press releases and leaflets but a consistent and co-ordinated campaign of activity to build and reinforce perceptions.
Media practice – making stories
Media, part of the campaign plan.
The media shouldn’t be a mystery or a threat, it is an opportunity. But is requires engagement, nurturing relationships and understanding why you are seeking to get the coverage.
You need to make news.
Reveal a new product: DVD’s, longer lengths of hire
Make yourself an expert: publicise the fact that you have bucked the trend
Say something controversial or utilise the unusual: challenge existing perceptions, or as we did highlight a book amnesty that led to the return of a book that had been loaned out for 40 years.
Publish surveys: the most popular books borrowed or trends over time, or the areas of your council that read the most books
Focus on people: the youngest and oldest users. Involve partners and other agencies– we utilised M15’s help during the recent Summer Reading challenge.
Run a competition: favourite books, best photos, most popular film.
None of these tactics will be particularly new, but four things are important.
First, consistency. A relationship with the media is built over time. You need to supply a consistent stream of stories to the media to be seen as a credible source of information.
Second, news is about people. So the more people stories you can generate the greater your chances of good coverage; popular librarians, most prolific borrowers, author visits.
Third, the media plan should be executed through the corporate communications team using their expertise.
And fourth, seek to utilise the media with a clear business objective in mind. Coverage should generate users through stories about books, potential recruits as people see the job as interesting and rewarding and, eventually funds from government by showcasing the worth of libraries through the media to government.
If you accept the image of libraries as fusty and old fashioned, as holding back library use you should also consider stories that counter-act that image. From racy books, to photogenic librarians and new services that make news and counter out-dated perceptions, media is a powerful tool to shape image.
Delivering in practice
I’ve talked about a reputation campaign for local government, a campaign framework and how to tackle the media. Finally I want to focus on some of the lessons from our library marketing campaign in Westminster.
First, the research was critical. Some of the responses were predictable – better books and longer opening hours but this was important evidence about issues we had to tackle to drive awareness and use of libraries. But some was surprising, the perceived lack of toilet facilities as a barrier to library use and a latent desire for greater community access, from lectures in the evening, to a council enquiry service.
Second, clarity about the objective. We have clear targets for visits and book issue. Our plan seeks to deliver 200,000 more visits and 200,000 more book issues. The important issue here is not the numbers, but that there is a clear business goal achieved between the communications team and the service. This means that both sides have to deliver for each other and there is an objective measure of success
Third, a defined strategy. To both enhance the existing customer experience and reach out to potential new customers within the community requires a long term marketing strategy with an annual short-term plans. Improving membership retention is the issue to be addressed in the short term. The overarching long-term strategy will be to build an image of libraries as modern, convenient and relevant service. So, again the service and corporate team committing to deliver for one another.
Fourth, creativity in implementation. We’ve pushed products such as 24 hour DVD rental through monthly membership emails, diect mail to selected groups, an updated website and point-of-sale promotion – “library staff recommend” for books, loyalty schemes. These are communication tactics that target our audience.
Fifth, robust evaluation. This is often the forgotten part of communications, but annual reviews of communications plans, monthly progress checks and then learning the lessons of what works is a critical part of effective communication.
I think that the common factors in our success in marketing library services is close working between corporate and service, characterised as a willingness to use communications and trust the communications staff and seeking to meet customer expectations.
Concluding remarks: challenges for you
Market products, not buildings.
Tell stories, not opening times
Get the service right
Challenge the corporate team to deliver; don’t create your own function
You need to get the service right, your corporate team need to understand from you the objectives and goals and be left to deliver the results through the tactics they think appropriate.
Westminster’s library campaign over 2006-8 has clear goals to increase usage and debunk common myths. It’s working to support the business as part of our corporate One City commitment to build strong communities, with the local library at their heart.
It won’t work overnight. It won’t work solely through communications, but it will work to increase usage and spread learning with persistence, skill and imagination.
2008 Westminster City Council. Contact the Council
