Minutes Public Relations Advisory Committee 

Public Relations Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes 

February 14, 2008   1:00 – 3:00 pm

Committee Members

Present: Charlotte Canelli, Janet Eckert, Susan Flannery, Deborah Lang Froggatt, Vicki Kaufman, Em Claire Knowles, Kathy Lowe, Rob Maier, Pat McLeod, Stephanie St. Laurence, Dawn Thistle, Libby Fox, Dawn Thistle, Celeste Bruno
Absent: Anna Popp, Greg Pronevitz, Mary Bender, Pat McLeod, Rick Levine (Portal Subcommittee)
Others Present: Lee Surette and Steve Swets, Buyer Advertising; Portal Subcommittee Members: Paul Kissman, Nancy Rea, Marlene Heroux, Laurie Lessner

Proceedings

Meeting called to order at 1:00pm

Celeste Bruno, MBLC Communications Specialist welcomed the group and shared feedback she has received regarding the ad campaign. She also handed out an article (provided by Vicki Kaufman) from Woman's Day magazine that highlights how libraries have helped women start their own businesses.

Minutes from November 5, 2007 meeting approved.  

Program Feedback 

Television  Steve Swets from Buyer Advertising showed the television commercial and provided a DVD of the ad for each PR Committee member.

Lee Surette, Creative Director from Buyer Advertising, and Steve shared the process involved in bringing the campaign to life. Television Commercial Comments from the group were all positive and included: "fun, lovely"; "it captured the ambiance and feel we wanted"; "this is the image we wanted to project"; "community living room"; "it was great to see it air during prime time"; "holds up well against big production ads"; "soundtrack and voiceover are great." Committee members have heard from academic libraries who want to know when an "academic library"spot will be done.

Radio   The group commented that they liked the radio spot. Steve stated that in buying air time for the radio spot, Buyer has tried to find a balance of providing more radio ads outside the Boston area so that those outside of the television area have exposure to our message.

Web site   The group liked the ease of the database searches. The group questioned whether linking to other library Web sites such as MSLA would be useful. Because the site is for the general public and not necessarily for librarians, it was felt that linking to "professional" sites would not be appropriate. The group questioned the "Find a Library Near You" search results which appear to only list public libraries. Celeste clarified that the search will allow users to get a list of academic and school libraries by clicking on "Show all Libraries." The group suggested that "Show all Libraries" be reworded and be more prominent on the page.

Toolkit   The group commented that the toolkit was "excellent"; "just the right amount of information." Steve shared that Buyer is currently working on a local ad for libraries that includes the messages from the campaign.

Media   The initial launch of the campaign was completed in the second week of February, with heavy advertising on both TV and radio starting 1/14. TV and radio will start up again in the spring the week of 3/31 and run through the week of 4/14. Summer media includes ads in May and the beginning of June.

Evaluation

Web site statistics from http://cms.beacontechnologies.com:8080/cms/entity/www.mass.gov/libraries are being used to help evaluate the campaign. Comparing data from the period 1/14-1/25 (heavy TV and radio advertising) and 2/4-2/13 (light advertising-only channel 5) showed that the number of sessions* was about triple during the period of heavy advertising.  Essentially the TV ad is doing what we wanted it to do: driving people to the Web site. 

The most popular pages on the site include “Find a Library Near Me” zip code search; Fast Facts, FAQs, PowerSearch, Virtual catalog, and Google vs. Virtual Resources.

* Sessions= a period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website, ending when the browser is closed or shut down, or when the user has been inactive on that site for a specified period of time.

 Added Value

Channel 5 & Channel 7 Microsites
Channels 5 & & have created library microsites on their Web sites that essentially ask the user a few questions, enter them in a contest, and then take them to http://libraries.state.ma.us/

GAB Magazine is an online magazine for parents. We will contribute articles from February through July. The February article, Your Toddler Belongs At the Library: 5 Reasons To Bring Your Child To Story Time was written by Margaret McGrath and Jennifer Jones from Plymouth Public Library. The article included a link to Plymouth Public Library as well as http://libraries.state.ma.us/ It was suggested that an article from a school librarian be included in the March issue of GAB. Channel 7 In addition to the microsite.

Channel 7 PSA   Channel 7 re-worked our television ad into a 15 second PSA. The group viewed the PSA and responded positively to the shortened ad.

More added value from Channel 7: During the first 3 weeks of their schedule, Channel 7 provided 25 additional spots at no charge.

More added value from Channel 5   During the first 2 weeks of the campaign, Channel 5 provided 6 additional spots at no extra charge.

Kiss 108 The station ran 50 streaming online spots and twenty 5 second "adlets" as added value (no charge) elements. They also ran 5 bonus 30 second spots (on air) over the first two weeks of the schedule.

WXLO The station has a cube shaped side-rotating banner on their homepage website.

Channel 40 PSA  The station created a 15 and 30 second PSA. The group viewed the PSAs and commented that the ads should have showed young people accessing more than books at the library. The 30 second spot does show a student with a computer, but when it was edited to 15 seconds that frame was removed.

Cable Access  Several cable access stations are showing the TV spot for a total of about 50,000 subscribers. Celeste will send an email to "allregions" to see if anyone else would like a DVD of the ad to show on cable and to collect information from those who may be showing the ad without the MBLC's knowledge. 

Update/New Materials

Paul Kissman provided a report from the Portal Subcommittee.  Some of the issues/ideas that he raised were:

1)  Including a person with a disability in the rotating graphics on the homepage.

2)  Currently the virtual resources search (PowerSearch) does not search all databases.  The subcommittee is looking at ways to include all databases without loosing the simplicity and ease that the current search options allow.

3)  Creating a federated search: a single search box that searches lots of different resources.

4)  Calendar of events that could harvest events from local libraries who use event keeper.

5)  Creating a message for libraries that don’t have an on-line catalog.

Year 2 Discussion: 20 Somethings

The group had several comments:

1) Broaden the campaign to include 18-22 year olds--draw in academic libraries.

2) Target graduating college seniors because access to academic institution databases is limited after graduation and they could be plugged into public library databases.

3) Focus on databases because they are not only appealing to 20-somethings, but useful to all groups.

4) Access/entry to databases needs to be fully flushed out before it is promoted to this age group.

5) Databases contain information you can count on.

6) Explore the possibility of using current web site to target 20-somethings.

7) Conduct informal "20 somethings focus groups"

Upcoming Activities

Janet Eckert discussed Summer Reading and suggested the following Web sites for complete Summer Reading information:

http://www.readsinma.org -splash page

http://www.readsinma.org/info - library information page

http://masummerreading.pbwiki.com/

Other Business/Next Steps

A Spring/Summer PR Committee Meeting will be scheduled.

Meeting adjourned at 3:30pm