The Ubiquitous Librarian

Building Around Movies: promotional ideas for libraries

Here's a sneak peek at an idea that I intend to pitch next week.

I often talk about the need for libraries to move away from transactional advertising, that is, simply promoting an event or service, and to include more a symbolic and even symbiotic promotional approach. Transaction-based or consumption-based advertising is fine in an infomercial kind of way, but there is a lot to be gained by supplementing that with a community-based approach. (I'll share more in the future.)

I read the Walking Paper post last week describing the use of Flickr for movie screenshot contests, and it got me thinking. I'm kind of on this short term, minimal effort, minimal cost, themed based, advertising kick. I want to quickly develop campaigns, run them for a few weeks, and then move on to something else.

Three distinctions we have: (1) a couple of Hollywood movies have been shot in the library or around campus, (2) one of our library admins sponsors a student club that hosts an annual film competition, and (3) we allegedly have an Oscar in our Archives.

How could we leverage these assets? Could we build a campaign around film? Why not take advantage of several projects coming together in the Spring and merge it with the Academy Awards?

I want us to forget about a big clever (lame) title or message, but simply string together a handful of events designed to integrate the library deeper into the campus culture, to give students a unique experience, and of course, for the library to gain more exposure.

Here are some ideas:

• Weekly Movie Screen Capture Contest : Starting in mid-January and running through the week of the Oscars in Feb, place a poster featuring a screenshot from a film we have in our collection in a display cabinet in our cafe. Students can guess the film via email (they have to use their campus account for authenticity) and we'll give a random winner two movie tickets each week. This will encourage people to come into the library as
  well as discover our movie collection. Might be cool to run a $5 per day Facebook banner ad once a week with the screenshot and link to information about the contest.
• iMovie Fest Events . In mid-January, GT participates in a student run film contest. They form teams to make 5 minute films within a week. Winners then go on to an Atlanta contest with our good neighbors GSU and Emory. Students come to the library to pick up and return their equipment and just to give you a sense of size, the average is over 75 submissions each year—that's a lot, especially for an engineering school! Anyway, in February they host a big event on campus with about 700 attendees—they watch several of the films and hand out awards. I was thinking, maybe we could host an after-party for the winners in a special secret room up on the top floor with a great view of the city. Only about 4 people have access to this room and the secrecy has become a campus/urban legend.
  
  But that's not all. We could also build an event later in the week. We close on Saturday's at 6pm . So why not reopen at 7pm and show all the movies on our 80 inch screen? Only about a third of the films get shown at the main event because of time (and quality?) so this would give everyone a chance to check out other people's work. We could fill the space with couches and comfortable chairs, as well as free popcorn and drinks, and interview students, a la documentary style, about the film making process. The student group already puts the films online, but we'd be celebrating the student and giving them a chance to meet/share others.
• Winter Wish List Run , aka: The Joey Fones 5K project. This is under development for February. Basically it is a 5k run and we're seeking donations. Participants will get a t-shirt and can also suggest a film that we should add to the collection. I think we're going to try and use Netflix's inexpensive purchasing service.
• Movie Displays . Host a display of movies shot within the library and/or around campus. Maybe a movie poster, combined with brief information, press, and photos for each?
• Trivia . A few of the restaurants on campus host a trivia contest every Thursday night. It would be cool if we could partner with them one week and have one night focus on just movie trivia. Maybe we could co-host and give out prizes or something.
• Oscar . We boost that we have an Oscar in our Archives, so why not dust it off, polish it up, and let people see it? Obviously we want to be in control, but why not let them hold it and take photos of themselves with it? Build it up as a full day, preferably the week leading up to the Academy Awards, and just see if people are interested.
• Show Movies . Obviously it's a chance to show movies. We've dabbled with this before, but they've always been linked to a class. Perhaps there is an opportunity to develop a theme and every Wednesday night (or whenever) show something interesting. I'd love to invite a different cultural student group to show a film each week: the Chinese Club, the Pakistani Club, the German Club, etc.
• Cross Promote Other Movies on Campus. It's not just about us, we can also cross-promote movie events that student groups offer. I recall the Russian Club had something going on somewhere in the Fall. And I know that SGA regularly has popular Hollywood film screenings. So again, pull all this together and give students options/awareness.
• Promote our stuff. Highlight our classes for film editing software iMovie and Final Cut. Also offer some clinics on how to use our equipment to burn DVDs and/or how to digitize VHS. As well as promote digital camcorders that are available for checkout.

That's just a couple of things off the top of my head. You get the point. For 6 weeks just blast them with the film theme. Rather than focusing on one big event, spread it around. Blend our self-promotion with crossover promotions, as well as celebrating the students. The emphasis is on the experience, rather than the resources or services we provide. It's really about how we can become a partner (or rather, a part) with our campus culture.

Food, Movies, Music (CeLIBration, PART 5)

As I mentioned in the original post , our goal was to host an event for incoming freshmen with mass appeal. We pulled together a few specialized activities, such as speed dating and ninja tag , and surrounded them with games , food, and other amusements.

Food is a big deal. The common thought is that you can draw people into any event if you feed them. Two years ago we offered pizza, but it went too quickly. Last year we offered hot dogs and were stuck with tons of leftovers. This year we switched back over to pizza. Dominos offers mediums for $5 each, so we planned on ordering 100 pizzas, 25 each hour. We had to alter our plans because turnout was greater than expected. Dominos suggested we pay $2 more for larges—which seemed to work out much better and over all didn't cost us too much more. (Yeah, yeah, I know they just wanted to get paid!)

Students had to wait in a long line until our second delivery arrived. Next time we'll order 75 pizzas from the start and then go from there. We'll also consider two lines, two separate distribution points to help spread people around. We also tried to diversify our pizza toppings, but the old saying, ‘you can't please everyone' is so true. Next time, half with pizzas will be just cheese, since that's what people wanted the most. Sorry you veggie people.

We are very fortunate to have Coca Cola as neighbors; they are literally just across the street from us. Coke donated about 250 bottles of soda and water, which greatly helped keep our costs down, however we ended needing to purchase additional drinks. Diet and Zero didn't go so well, whereas water, Coke Classic, and Vault were gone quickly. We used the kiddie pools with ice distribution method.

We also rented two popcorn machines for around $200 and set them up in different zones. One was near movies, of course. There is just something cool about movie theater style popcorn that cannot be duplicated in a microwave.

This trifecta of soda, pizza, and popcorn worked well and we'll probably offer those again next year. Don't forget about plates and napkins.

Movies are nice, but attendance was pretty weak. We offered a handful of Dave Chappelle and Aqua Teen Hunger Force episodes, along with some short student films. Our aim was to capture the passerby with short funny videos, as opposed to a longer feature like Shaun of the Dead . I guess I wanted us to strive for the ‘sampling' model in which everyone spent a few minutes in each zone. Location might have been an issue here because the movies were tucked away from the heart of the activity. Maybe if these were viewable from the food line, people would enjoy them? Once students picked up their drink and pizza, they seemed focused on talking, hanging out, or playing games. They didn't want to sit around and watch TV shows.

Music draws people in… that's what we found out. The student radio station set up just outside the Library and played an eclectic mix. This entertained people who were waiting while we rushed with last minute prep. It also let the campus know that something was up!

As I mentioned in the original post , we had specific music for dating and tag. We wanted each zone to have a unique feel. I wanted to feature live bands doing short acoustical sets, hopefully next year. We were able to feature the GT improv comedy troupe, Let's Try This !. They did two shows, the first one (8pm) had about 100 people, while the later one (10pm) had about 15.

The Freshmen Orientation office gave away free t-shirts, but we wish we had something to offer too. Not typical library things like pens, candy, or bookmarks, but maybe 1 free itunes download, or temporary tattoos, I don't know, something… something inexpensive that we could give a lot of. We spoke about doing a raffle, but those are so random, I'd rather we have some type of mind game, puzzle, or challenge that they could complete in order to be eligible for a variety of prizes. Lots of room for improvement.

(Next up is the ‘justification' – why do we do these things? Academic Libraries are all about books, journals, computers and studying, right? Oh yeah, and information literacy!)