The Big Read came and went through our library in April. It's almost surprising, because it almost didn't come at all...at least from a marketing standpoint.
Despite the fact that it takes about a year's worth of advance planning and organizing, the person in charge of coordinating this series of events for our library still hadn't approached the marketing department for any publicity as late as two weeks and a couple days before April 1st. You could almost hear the chirping of crickets as we waited and waited, knowing it would eventually come...but when?
I wasn't surprised by this oversight, and knew that if I didn't sound the precursory alarm, we would probably still not have heard anything until about two days before the first event. And of course, that would mean I would have to inherit that person's emergency due to lack of proper planning. As a general rule of thumb, our library likes to try to send printed publicity out at least two weeks in advance to the public so they have time to set it on their calendar and make arrangements if needed.
This advance planning and effort by the marketing department is chronically lost on some people who get so wrapped up in the details of getting events organized that they practically forget to tell the public that it is actually going to happen. It only makes common sense to me that if you're going to spend the time and effort to have a public event that you might, you know, want to tell people before, say, a day before the event takes place.
Once the alert was sounded to wake up sleepy minds, the marketing requests came pouring in like the pulling of teeth. Of course, with these newly identified rush items mixed in with all the already well organized other projects on the production schedule, time was tight and everyone had to scramble to make up for lost preparation time. Thankfully, not everything had to arrive before the first of the month; some events and their respective collaterals could be staggered in the production schedule.
To complicate matters, however, I planned to be away from the office during the first week of April. So whatever time could have been spent during the first week of the month to finalize any remaining projects, had to be spent either before my departure or after my return on the second week of the month--or background images made for people to add their own text over top of while I was away. This was easily accomplished once the need was determined.
To the national organizer's credit, pre-designed "templates" were provided for a few marketing items. Unfortunately, however, these documents weren't modifiable in a way that they could be taken and made into other documents. So, for example, if you wanted to send out an 8.5x11 inch flyer, as well as an 8.5x11 inch sign--each requiring different amounts of text and space--you were stuck with the same 8.5x11 inch template they provided that had a big illustration on it of the featured author. Or if you needed another common size of something like a quarter page invitation, it wouldn't be there and another design would need to be canibalized to make it. But then, the logos and attribution text--which had to be maintained at a required size--would be scaled down along with the design to render the text an unreadable, or unapproved point size. Not helpful! To remedy the muck, I took what I could that was offered from the media kit and developed my own set of templates that maintained the design sensibility initiated by the national organizer and met all the mandatory associated grant requirements for publicity use.
In the end, over 16 different marketing items were created by our marketing department to support a variety of different events that took place over the course of the month. Above, I show a numbered key to indicate the different collaterals used. I may be missing a couple, but these are the ones I recall most.
So here's a round-up of our library's The Big Read event publicity:
1) Thank you poster 16x20 inch
2) Event listing flyer 11x17 inch
3) Background template for 8.5x11 inch for print ad
4) Half page 5.5x8.5 inch event program front
5) Half page 5.5x8.5 inch event program back
6) Background template for 5.5x8.5 inch communications
7) Art contest 8.5x11 inch sign
8) TV station public service announcement ad (PSA).
Same item used for quarter page handbills.
9) Print magazine ad NFSD
10) Website invitation notice
11) Quarter page event invitation front
12) Website banner ad for art contest
13) Quarter page event invitation back
14) Website banner ad for general event announcement
15) Website ad 4x4 inch
16) Art contest artwork labels
