Communicating Your Relevance and Value to Your Patrons
Elisabeth Doucett
The case studies included here demonstrate some of the different ways in which branding is being done at libraries. They are based on questions that grew out of my own experience with branding. One of my key objectives was to understand how much background a library had in marketing or branding before it started its branding project. Through this process I discovered two things. First, there are very few libraries that have gone through a branding process. I think the number is so small because libraries are either intimidated by branding or still do not understand what branding can do for them. Second, the libraries that did branding often had very little experience in it but still managed to do a good job because they used common sense and trusted their own intuition about what was right for their organization. Due to the uniqueness of each situation, no library will end up doing branding work in exactly the same way as another library. Each organization has to determine what it wants to achieve from a branding project and how it is going to use the subsequent results.
The libraries in some of the cases provided here did not follow the process laid out in this book. Their approaches are included to demonstrate that it is OK to just go out and get started and that you do not have to be perfect in the process. Even if you do every aspect of a branding project yourself, the results will make a big difference to your organization. Do not be afraid of branding (or marketing), and do not hesitate to experiment to find out what works best for your library.