What I learned in Yoga last night
My yoga teacher talked last night about the importance of feeling OK with the fact that you can often be wrong or not know how to do something.
I think this is a very integral thing to realize and embrace if you are embarking on any kind of public relation campaign or marketing campaign for your organization.
Let me explain:
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With a marketing campaign you often have to take a leap into the unknown, you have to try things that aren’t comfortable.
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You have to be ready when you create a campaign to be wrong – just dead wrong sometimes.
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Sometimes you will create a funny poster that just bombs or conversely you will create a wild poster that really hits the mark and becomes wildly popular. Last year we made this poster that students ripped off the wall and hung in their dorm room.
How can you comfortably move into taking chances?
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make a one year plan; assess it after one year; and be flexible.
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show your posters and other design material to someone outside your organization; ask them to critique it; sit quietly while they do it and actively listen.
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browse magazines and journals open your mind to images that may not naturally come to you…
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walk around your community and look at what people are wearing , saying and looking at ….
BUT MOST of all be able to be wrong – BE FEARLESS
I think it was David Byrne, of the Talking Heads who said
“By being lost , you can be found” or something like that….
OK — Mary is twisting my arm to make a comment. I was at that same yoga class last night and I have experience doing things wrong, so I guess this qualifies me to comment. I agree with Mary that to be really creative, you have to be willing to make mistakes sometimes. And when working with people, you also have to be willing to be a little crazy and to use humor. You need to be comfortable having people laugh at you as well as laugh with you. We work on the reference desk and teach lots of undergraduate classes. Undergraduates are great — I used to teach kindergarten and lots of undergrads remind me of big kindergarten kids. They want to be really sophisticated, but the 5 year olds inside them are lurking pretty close to the surface. If you can do something to appeal to their inner 5 year old — you can hook them. We have an exercise where we walk around with students while they actually find books, journals and videos in the library. We give them a silly sticker on their exercise sheet, each time they show us the different things they locate. They love those stickers — it never fails. One time when I didn’t offer stickers to some of them, they complained about me. What does this have to do with marketing? Remember your audience and if you are marketing the library to students, particularly to undergraduates, think of fun, silly activities, logos, posters, etc. Think about pairing what you want to teach or introduce to your audience with things that are fun and that will be engaging. You can have a serious message that doesn’t have to be seriously presented. And don’t be afraid to make yourselves look at little crazy. It will appeal to the 5 year olds.