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Baiting the Hook: Grabbing the Elusive Non-User With Arresting Ads

With its array of programs and services for a diverse public, Queens (N.Y.) Library (QL), is well positioned to serve its users of all ages—whether they’re babies, children, teens, adults, or senior citizens. Similar to public library systems across the country, we offer so much more than books, magazines, CDs, and DVDs. We have thousands of free programs each year, and offer free Internet and Wi-Fi throughout each of our neighborhood libraries. Our job information centers help people find work and also offer assistance with résumés and cover letters. And our adult learner program helps people both learn and improve their English. This is just a fraction of what we offer at QL. We are a full-service institution, and help a population of 2.3 million in the most ethnically diverse county in the United States.

With so much to offer, QL is focused on reaching as many people as possible, particularly elusive nonusers. While people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four are notoriously difficult to reach, there is an entire group of people both younger and older who simply have no idea what a public library has to offer.

For whatever reason, non-users tend to have a very traditional view of public libraries. Some of these nonusers imagine elderly librarians in glasses, their hair tied back in severe buns. They remember being shushed or told to leave the library because of boisterous conversations with friends. They envision catalogs with yellowing, typewritten cards. Other non-users think they have everything they need on their portable devices, and have an attachment to Facebook and Twitter that they assume public libraries either don’t share or are incapable of providing them. And still other non-users might be from countries where public libraries barely exist, much less offer the myriad of free services that public libraries in the United States have.

Within QL’s marketing and communications department, we see correcting these mistaken perceptions as a challenge worth meeting. How do we convince non-users that their view of libraries and librarians as fusty and fogeyish is just flat-out wrong? How do we convey to them that a public library offers so much more than books and the occasional top-ten CD?

Queens is a borough with many neighborhoods, most of which are served by at least one daily or weekly newspaper. For now, even with a newspaper industry that is suffering from low circulation and user migration to the Web, readers throughout the borough still rely on free and subscription-based newspapers. Using what we know about our community, we’ve responded to the challenge of attracting non-users with an advertising campaign that features six distinct ads, and we’re changing ads every four to six weeks to keep our message fresh. The campaign is designed to show these non-users all they can find, do, and enjoy at QL.

Find Love @ Queens Library

Our main objective with this campaign of six ads is to provide a challenge and invitation to non-users that disrupts their traditional view of a library. The use of striking visuals and unexpected headlines causes non-users (and all viewers) to stop and reconsider their library.

The Love @ Queens Library ad, with its visually arresting image of a female vampire taking a satisfying and bloody bite out of the shoulder of her halfclothed male companion, was designed to make people stop and stare. And the copy, “Love might
bite, but not at Queens Library,” drew non-users in, making them rethink their traditional view of libraries. Furthermore, we timed the rollout of the campaign to coincide with the opening of the film The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

We also coordinated a rollout of accompanying collateral materials to coincide with the print ad run. Thus, when regular customers came through the doors of our sixty-two neighborhood libraries, they saw full-color, oversized posters and stand-up
tent cards featuring the ad. And, if we met our goal of attracting non-users, those potential customers also came into QL and saw the collateral material echoing the first ad of the campaign. In this way, we were able to reinforce the theme and relevance of the campaign.

Whet Your Taste Buds

With our next ad, we asked ourselves: What’s something else that Americans love to do, besides falling in love? Eat, of course!

With the success of television shows such as Top Chef and magazines like Every Day with Rachael Ray, it’s clear how many people prioritize buying, preparing, and eating food. And so, immediately after the Love campaign, we ran Eat @ Queens Library during the holiday feasting season. Eat @ Queens Library told our customers and potential customers that QL has more than 46,000 free cookbooks.

Hang Ten

Some of the non-users are well versed in technology, particularly blogging and social networking. Our third ad, Surf @ Queens Library, capitalized on this. Introduced in January 2010, our advertisement featured surfboards in warm and inviting rainbow
colors, as well as a beautiful ocean background. The copy lets viewers know that they can “ride the technology wave” at QL, with more than two thousand computer workstations with free Internet access.

Hip-Hop Headquarters

The fourth ad in our series has particular appeal for a hard group to reach: eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds. Think about all of the early adopters of Apple’s iPod—and before them, those who shelled out good money for Sony’s Discman and Walkman. They’re inevitably teens and young adults: people for whom music is as necessary as breathing. And what about the genres they love? One of the best examples that has attracted countless devoted listeners is hip-hop. Since its debut on the streets of the Bronx, hiphop has been an enduring music genre, attracting young urbanites with its funky, upbeat rhythm and danceable sound. It’s not going out of style anytime soon, and, because of its popularity, QL has incorporated hip-hop into its street-savvy advertisement, letting Queens residents know that hip-hop CDs—from Kanye West to Jay-Z—are all free.

Work on the Runway

QL has two job information centers (JICs). The breadth of information that the library’s JICs offer, and our workshops and programs, are designed to give our users the tools they need to succeed, including résumé writing, job interviews, and job search techniques.

With our fifth ad in the campaign, Catwalk @ Queens Library, we are dovetailing our desire to advertise the outstanding employment services we offer with our strategic plan to attract non-users, letting them know that we offer much more than books and magazines. And fashion is a topic that never goes out of style, particularly here in New York City. The copy explains how our JICs can help with job searches for aspiring photographers, models, and others associated with the fashion industry, in addition to assisting all customers with their résumés.

Bollywise, We’ve Got the Goods

In the burough of Queens, which has an estimated 160 languages spoken by people who come from 190 different countries, QL has a particular responsibility to reach out to our foreign-born population. We are constantly on the lookout for ways to welcome all of those who call Queens home. And, as our mission statement calls for us to fulfill not only our customers’
informational and educational needs, but also their cultural and recreational needs, we have applied this imperative to our final advertisement, Bolly @ Queens Library.

This ad lets Queens residents know they can have their choice of nearly 17,000 Bollywood DVDs at QL, all for free. At the same time, with its focus on India’s addictive cinematic genre, it implicitly welcomes newcomers.

Bring ’Em In

While it would be wonderful to run a multifaceted ad campaign and wait for these hard-to-grab nonusers to walk through our doors, we know that’s not enough. Even though the debut ad has already received a positive response, there’s more to do to
reach these elusive patrons. That’s why we’re combining our ads with complementary marketing collateral. And, overall, we’re working harder to show non-library users that, far from being a traditional library system, we have a wealth of attractive materials, services, and programs that they want.

The tools at our fingertips include a fresh website that we’ll unveil later this year and a concerted effort to change rigid, unchanging policies and procedures to a far more flexible, user-friendly, and adaptive customer service model. While all that is happening, we’re working harder than ever to get those nonusers to stop and take notice. When you think about it, it’s pretty gratifying: all that loving, eating, surfing, and more that you can do at QL. In fact, it might make you think it’s not a traditional library at all.