ACRL Award and a Missed Opportunity

I’m definitely not suited for PR. PR is all about patting yourself on the back and saying “look at how great we are.” I’m much more interested in a conversation that goes “what do you need, oh yeah? Well check this out.”

I’ll never be a library director because I cringe at pageantry. We had our official ACRL Library of the Year presentation today. It just wasn’t my thing. We went carnival style with the marching band, hotdogs, soda, and lots of speeches. But what I really like is that at the same time we offered alternative programming in another location.  We had two students present research, one on the student/faculty relationship via FaceBook, the other on the changing face of television with respect to gender and sexual identity.

Right now our admin team is having a “dignitaries” lunch with all the important people on campus. What we missed out on was a chance to interact with students more directly. I think you can spread the word to the masses with a free hotdog and the school mascot jumping around, but we should have pulled together a second lunch for student connectors. (I hate using Gladwell’s term.) Something like this:

Get someone from SGA, someone from the campus radio and tv stations, the president of the Chinese Student Group, someone from the photography, BBQ, and Dance organzations, a few members from Greek community, a leader from the environmental group, the human rights group, the college republicans, and so on. Get 30 or so diverse personalities that are active around campus and treat them to a decent lunch and say something like: “Ok, so we won this award. Right now our Director is meeting with the President, Provosts, Deans, and Donors. They’re basically trying to get more money. You guys are important because you’re the ones who are going to help us spend it. And so on…” Start with a basic focus group, lay out future plans and ideas, but what I really want to dig into is who these people are. How do their groups function? What types of influence do they have? How can we package our message differently (relevantly) to each? How are their needs unique and similar? Where do they succeed and where do they struggle? Use this lunch to nurture relationships with influential students and promote overall good-will for the library.

Back in the 20th century it was all about location, location, location. Now it’s all about segmentation, segmentation, segmentation.

Anyway, I’m off to Orlando for the week. My brother’s getting married. He’s the one with a wife, a nice car, and the free trip to Europe when he graduated from high school. Hmmm, maybe I’m bitter?

Comments

[Angel]

Damn, I just cringe at having to wear a tie, so there is why I would never make director. Anyways, congratulations on the award. I like the idea of looking at the student "connectors" as the ones who will spend the money. Definitely the questions you want to ask them are questions we should be asking more of our service community. Best, and keep on blogging.

[Ken Liss]

Having worked in public relations before becoming a librarian, and having dealt with PR people as a newspaper reporter before that, I have to say that while far too much PR is indeed about “patting yourself on the back and saying ‘look at how great we are,'” good PR is really much more about “what do you need, oh yeah? Well check this out.”

As a reporter, I got lots of press releases beginning something like “ABC company, the greatest thing since sliced bread, is proud to announce….” What dreck! And most of what followed was dreck, too, self-serving and of no interest to our readers.

But as a PR person, I learned that the key to getting media to use your news was to present it in a way that met their need, that helped them provide information or entertainment or something of value to their audience.

That meant being selective about where you sent things. It meant writing press releases, when you used them, as news stories, like a reporter not like a flack. It meant not sending people things you knew they couldn't use just because they were on your mailing list. And it meant responding promptly and professionally when the media contacted you.

Everybody has a message, and PR -- through the media, special events, or whatever -- is a legitimate way to spread it. But to be effective it has to have something for the receiver as well as the sender.

Sorry to get on my high horse about this, but I learned a long time ago that the #1 rule of public relations is "Know Your Audience." It made me better at what I did then, and it makes me better at what I do now.

[Richard Meyer]

Modest correction to the facts: 8 students were included in the lunch for 50, in part to reflect their leadership and engagement with the library. Given space and budget constraints, the whole student body was provided a free hot dog lunch on the library patio. One of the speakers for both sessions was a student leader.

[Brian]

Rich,

I guess my point is that I am more interested in influential students rather than student leaders. I thought it would have been interesting to also run ‘chill’ focus group rather than a celebratory lunch. Anyway, I hope it worked out. I saw the photos and it looked nice.