Sunday, June 27, 12:30–1:30 p.m.
Swap & Shop Presents: PR X-change (Public Relations Exchange)
LLAMA—PRMS Washington Convention Center—Special Events, Hall C, Aisle 700

Also, at the Swap & Shop my colleague from American University Library and fellow Fearless Collaborator, Patricia West and I will be accepting our award for the Best of Show Annual Report we created together last year.
This annual report has also won two additional awards: The Graphic Design USA InHouse Design Award and the Award of Excellence from the Communicator Awards.

Internal marketing is really important to us at Fearless Future. It something we often talk about with people when we are conducting workshops around the country. Internal marketing is defined as everything you do to inform and include your internal staff in your marketing efforts. It is so important that we devote a chapter in our book to the topic.

Mary and her colleague and friend Amy Ward will conduct an interactive workshop on internal marketing as part of the Grassroots program called Become Market Ready!

Become Market Ready!
ALA Washington Convention Center -101 Staff Support Interests
Monday, June 28, 8–10 a.m

Libraries now understand the importance of articulating value deliberately and consistently; some call this marketing. Prepare for marketing to your users by sharing the why, how and when with your organization. This workshop will focus on making your institution “market ready.” Before your organization spends time and money on marketing, attend this workshop and discover the proven tools needed for staff buy in. Learn how to create and conduct a publication audit and open forums for the entire staff. Find out how to develop style sheets and templates that will bring professional consistency to your marketing.

Neither Mary or Amy are morning people so it will interesting to see them dargging their coffee in for this one. They are both skilled trainers and presenters, so this should not only be fun but also informative!

As an avid gamer, I watched with intrigue as this graphically-stunning, experimental game came close to release. The worst fear of every gamer is that their most anticipated game will be uncovered as a series of cinematics or quick time events (QTE) that has no meaningful gameplay. During an interview, the creator David Cage avoided mentioning QTE’s and instead used the term “Interactive Drama” to categorize his game. From a marketing perspective, this oxymoronic term was a wise omission from the commercials and packaging.

This was clever because the title “Interactive Drama” inherently implies a certain amount of un-interactivity. But no matter how many talented writers you bring together to create a Choose Your Own Adventure book, the reader will still only be flipping numbered pages. As such, during Heavy Rain the player is restricted to the narrative presented and given a limited amount of choices to make (few with actual consequences). Thus, it very much mirrors a regular game but without varied gameplay mechanics and more squares (■) than a college library during finals week.

In the end, the gorgeous graphics and powerful story of Heavy Rain break new ground for the genre, but limited and repetitive gameplay keeps it from breaking any sales records.

Mario Halkyer is a guest poster from York, PA who
runs his own blog and regularly plays more games than needed.

Print is dying.
Digital is surging.
Everyone is confused.

http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/

[via DaringFireball]

But, we have great news, you can now order our book Bite-Sized Marketing; realistic solutions for the overworked librarian!

ALA Editions, the publishing imprint of the American Library Association (ALA), announces the release of “Bite-Sized Marketing: Realistic Solutions for the Overworked Librarian,” by Nancy Dowd, Mary Evangeliste, and Jonathan Silberman. This book shares simple and cost-effective approaches to effective library marketing in a format that reflects the way people read today. Filled with contemporary marketing ideas, the authors provide:

• How-tos of guerrilla marketing
• Cutting-edge digital marketing practices
• Benefits of traditional print media

Visually compelling and thoroughly practical, this book challenges librarians to market libraries in new and original ways.

Click here to purchase it from ALA.

Contact us and we can get you a $5 coupon.

Stop what you are doing and watch this amazing video from Buck!

As part of Mountain Dew’s new logo launch, the brand team at Pepsi asked us to conceive, direct and produce a short animation exploring the evolution of the Dew Brand. We decided to take a walk through history (packed with historical taglines), starting with Dew’s country roots as a moonshine mixer and getting progressively more urban as we move to modern times. And all in 15 seconds!

[via Drawn!]

Mary and I have been working extremely hard on our new book with our good friend Nancy Dowd.

The book, Bite-Sized Marketing; solutuions for the overworked librarian, will be coming out this summer from ALA.
Keep an eye out for it!

• January—Mary moved back East in January to central Pennsylvania. After one year as Director of User Services and Outreach at Musselman Library, Gettysburg College she continues to be engaged and excited about her work there. She and her wonderfully smart and creative colleagues are currently in the process of creating an integrated approach to marketing in libraries. Stay tuned for more details.
• April—Jonathan continues to receive accolades about the IM marketing effort he was involved in with American Univerity Library and in April he presented about it at Computers in Libraries with our amazing colleagues Alex Hodges and Patricia West. This campaign proved that a library could create a great looking campaign that matched perfectly with its target audience and clearly stated the benefit of using the IM service to that audience.
• April—Mary presented at CARL (California Academic and Research Libraries) in March with Pauline D. Manaka from University of California, Irvine and fellow fearless colleague Yvonne Mery from the University of Arizona Libraries. We adapted the “Can Libraries be sold as Soap?” for an hour session and Pauline added a section about Energy Star. Pauline is a great library colleague and Yvonne and I hope to work with her again soon.
• May—Mary was invited to be a panelist at the opening session Branding Bravely of at Amigos Library Services and at the same conference Mary and Yvonne conducted a three hour workshop version of “Can Libraries be sold as Soap?” We worked with the wonderful Laura Kimberly and Eddy Smith of Amigos who made us feel so welcome in Texas. Last but not least we got to catch up with one of our favorite fearless friends, Tommie Wingfield.
• May—Mary was invited to be a panelist on College of Dupage’s Library Challenges and Opportunities Teleconference—Rules of Engagement: Attracting and Engaging Library Users. This was the first time Mary was involved in a live, produced teleconference and it took her a while to get used to this format. The entire production crew at Dupage was so amazing, so patient and professional. Ellen Sutton who coordinates the Dupage Library Challenges and Opportunities asked Mary to work with her on the 2009 Library Challenges & Opportunities and together they put together two new programs for 2009. More about them later.
• August—Jonathan’s design of American University Library’s Annual Report was featured in Graphic Design USA’s “American In-House Design Award”.
• August—Mary conducted a three-hour version of “Can Libraries be sold as Soap?” for the Tri-state College Library Cooperative. Mary worked closely with Joy Dlugosz of Eastern University to adapt the workshop to the needs of the organization. Joy first met Mary when Mary was a guest lecturer for University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Science. Mary does this every April for professor Susan Alman who is the director of the Fast Track program at Pitt. Joy is amazingly energetic and committed to librarianship.
• September—Fearless Future begins work with the Adams County SPCA. First we redesigned their unchaining brochure and in 2009 we will be working on their membership campaign. We are so impressed with the commitment all of the ACSPCA employees and board bring to this shelter; we are honored to work with them.
• October—Jonathan conducts Adobe Illustrator® training workshop for ARGY
• October—Jonathan’s design for American University Library’s Annual Report is also featured inPrint Magazine’s October 2008 Issue “Creativity + Commerce Business Graphics”
• November—Mary brought together three librarians to talk about Information Literacy for Life. This was the first teleconference that Mary helped shape and facilitated. It could not have gone any better. Alex Hodges, Niketha McKenzie and Roshin Matthew all presented about information literacy and their particular populations but more importantly the collaborations that can be created to create a seamless continuum of information literacy throughout one’s lifetime. Keep your eyes of all three of these librarians because you will undoubtedly her more about them.
• November—Fearless Future works pro-bono for ArtLitho to design their holiday card.
• November—Mary has chapter published in Staff Development Strategies That Work! Stories and Strategies from New Librarians. Mary chapter is titles Knowing and Showing : from a good to a great boss. In this chapter Mary recounts eight lessons she remembers from her greatest mentors and bosses. Working with editors Georgie Donovan and Miguel Figueroa made bring this chapter to fruition easy.
• December—Fearless Future submits manuscript for their how-to marketing book soon to be published by ALA entitled “Bite Size Marketing”.
• December—Fearless Future starts work with Julie Strange at Maryland Askus Now to create a commercial to promote their state-wide virtual reference service.

Thank you to everyone for making 2008 a great year!!!
Mary & Jonathan

Essentially, they are going to follow around five different kinds of designers/artists as they cull the NYPL looking for inspiration. In this first video of the series they introduce the designers and their respective mediums. Very neat stuff! Can’t wait to see the other parts of the series.

The New York Public Library holds a wealth of unexpected sources of inspiration for artists and designers—from vintage valentines and textile patterns, to fabric samples and turn-of-the-century menus from around the world. For this online-only miniseries, “Design by the Book,” the Library partnered with the leading design blog Design*Sponge to invite five New York City-based artists to sift through our collections in search of inspiration. Stay tuned for future episodes as the artists, who range from a glassblower to a letterpress printer, create unique works inspired by what they found; special guest Isaac Mizrahi will also join us to share his sources of inspiration. The artists are: Lorena Barrezueta, Rebecca Kutys, Mike Perry, John Pomp and Julia Rothman. Music by Clear Tigers.

[via Drawn!]

[via Drawn]