Scenario

Illinois Heartland Library System received a grant to offer free cataloging of personal and business historical items for patrons of select Illinois libraries. I was tasked with leading the development of a new brand. I also needed to create a toolkit of assets for an integrated marketing campaign that the hosting libraries could use to promote Community Digitization Day events.

Action

Branding

I held a branding workshop with key Mobile Memory Lab stakeholders to develop a brand identity for the new program, including logos, visuals, and written brand guidelines. Using the parameters developed during the workshop, I then mocked up a logo in Canva. The final version of the logo and its variations, including a coordinating logo for the program’s Community Digitization Day events, I created in Adobe Illustrator.

Marketing Toolkit

Using Canva, I designed a series of flyer and graphic templates promoting the Mobile Memory Lab Community Digitization Day events. I then customized them for each of the program’s three pilot-year events. Each library client received a customized digital promo kit that included a flyer with variations for in-house and out-of-house printing, social media and newsletter ad graphics, alt text for all images, and guidelines for using the promo kit components. I wrote and added a feature story press release for the second year of the program.

Program Promotion

During year one, Illinois Heartland reached out to three libraries to pilot the program. Future years would require both documentation of the program’s success to its funder and promotion of the program to the libraries of Illinois. I therefore attended a Digitization Day event and took many photographs of the Mobile Memory Lab cataloger at work with two of the participants. The photos were included in membership presentations, the Annual Progress & Impact Report, and grant reports. Additionally, I was able to build a library of photographs that we could use in both patron-facing and library-facing marketing materials.

Results

The libraries and their patrons loved the new program! Each of the three pilot-year participating libraries used assets from the toolkit to publicize its library’s Digitization Day events. Two events were nearly filled to capacity, and the third had a substantial waiting list that resulted in the addition of a second event day, demonstrating demand for the program and effectiveness of the promotional materials.

Responses to participant and library satisfaction surveys were overwhelmingly positive and provided data for program improvements for future years.

Additionally, the Mobile Memory Lab grant was funded for a second year.