Building a community creativity lab

In case anyone's been wondering what happened to me, I did not fall off the earth! It just feels that way since I've been wrapped up in beginning of the school year craziness and starting my second-to-last Marketing class before completing my certificate - yeah! While it's been insanely busy, I've still been cooking up ideas for the blog and I think there are some exciting developments in the works.

The next project I want to tackle is building on the concept of a community creativity lab as a model for library services. I got some fairly good responses to my previous post on the topic, so I decided to take the concept a bit further. I can't claim to be the first to come up with this general idea, and there's already a lot of outstanding work being done along these lines. However, I thought it was a little unfair to say that libraries should become creativity labs without giving any specifics as to how they could work in reality.

So, in a series of posts, I'm going to tackle questions like:

• What would the founding principles and purpose of a creativity lab be?
• What would it look like in terms of physical spaces, both public and non-public?
• How would the community be involved?
• What services would be offered?

You get the idea. Since there's already evidence of these labs taking shape, I'm going to start with examples I've seen and point out their key elements and build up from there. (I already have a guest post or two coming up that describe some outstanding initiatives). I have no idea how many posts it'll take to fully explore this idea or how long it'll take, but I'm just going to keep plugging away at it. At the end, whatever that may be, I'll assemble the posts into a document that you all can do with what you wish.

Care to be involved? I would really love it if you readers would contribute your thoughts and ideas as we go along. Please comment on any post of interest and I'll incorporate your thoughts into the final paper. If you want to be involved sooner, please send me examples you've seen in libraries or elsewhere that you think resemble "creativity labs." I'll feature them in my posts and use them to define this concept.

Final note: What does any of this have to do with marketing? Faithful readers will know that in marketing, the most important piece of the marketing mix is the product. This series on the library as creativity lab will essentially explore new product ideas for libraries that resonate with today's patrons and their increasingly sophisticated needs. Here's hoping it works! :-)

No one cares about you

It's harsh to assert that no one cares about you (and by you I mean librarians and by extension, libraries), but it's a marketing reality we all confront. The cold truth is that patrons don't conduct themselves with the assumption that libraries are intrinsically good or something they should naturally care about. The question is how do we get patrons to care at least enough to take advantage of some of our services some of the time?

One answer is to communicate with them in terms of things they do care about, namely, benefits. Patrons probably don't care about your interlibrary loan service, but they do care about getting that tough-to-find book in time to finish their report. Saving time and writing top-notch reports is a benefit; offering interlibrary loan is a service or feature. In marketing our services, it's important to focus on the former instead of the latter.

Some people may think this is an obvious statement, but after having completed a personal selling course, I can tell you it's not. When making a sales pitch, it's extremely tempting to rattle of lists of features as though their usefulness is obvious. In my selling course, we spent a great deal of time developing our Initial Benefit Statement (IBS). Essentially, an IBS is a statement that tells customers why they should care, and in sales it's often used as an opener in sales presentations and sales calls. In library work, I try to remember to open with some form of an IBS when I make presentations, write promotional materials, or try to "sell" an idea. I'm also thinking I will develop an IBS for my orientation outreach activities this summer when I have about 1 second to get the library on students' radar.

Not all marketers believe in the value of an IBS, with good reason. I'll even admit, it's a little stiff and one-directional, which is the opposite of what marketing should be. But, I contend it's still useful because developing an IBS forces us to think in terms of what's most important to our patrons from their point of view, which then frames our activities and communications.

The Marketing Genius blog had a nice little rant against selling based on features instead of benefits. Try examining the marketing communications you're exposed to and see if you can figure out what the benefits are. I think you'll be surprised by how many advertisers don't communicate them at all.

How do you develop an IBS?
There's no real secret to creating an IBS other than to focus relentlessly on the "So what?" aspect of your services.

Here are a few pointers that might help you:
1. Think about the services you offer or are featuring in your newsletter, etc. Make a list of all of the reasons your patrons should care about the service. You may want to ask patrons who use a service why they do so.
2. Develop a statement that explains in a sentence or two what the most important benefits are. IBS's may start with phrases like, "Gives you the ability to," "Saves you [time, stress, hassle]," "Increases your [productivity, profits, marketability]," and so on. You know you're on the wrong track if your IBS starts out with phrases like, "Our library features...," "We provide access to...," "We house X number of...," you get the idea. Notice that good IBS's emphasize the you (customer), whereas bad IBS's emphasize the we/us (librarians/libraries).
3. Consider your competitive position. Sometimes, the best IBS's are based on a competitive advantage. For example, "Devise sound business plans and save money with Great Local Library - the only local organization to provide you free one-to-one research assistance with highly-trained information professionals who use the latest market research tools."

Even though it's difficult to presume that no one cares about us, doing so gives us the perspective we need to ensure that we communicate only what patrons value, and drop the stuff that's only meaningful to us.

[Update: Apparently, the phrase "no one cares about you" is one that marketer extraordinaire Seth Godin uses in just about every presentation he gives. I must have had that sentence ingrained in my subconscious because I only just discovered this fact after reviewing one of his talks. If I had remembered, I would have given him credit. Just when you think you're being original... ;-) ].

Neat blog find

About.com highlights a MBOW (Marketing Blog of the Week) called CopyBlogger written by a marketer/writer. Here's and excerpt from the blog description: "Good blogging and good copywriting share many of the same attributes — plain spoken words designed to focus on the needs of the reader by using stories, education and a clear demonstration of benefit and value. In an overly-crowded marketplace, good copywriting allows you to catch people’s attention, and smart blogging allows you to capitalize on that attention by building trust, sales and profits." The blog is intended for those who want to beef up their persuasive writing skills for the Web, particularly for blogs. Couldn't we all stand to work out our writing muscles?