Information Outlook, Vol. 6, no. 11, November 2002

By Laura Claggett

Laura Claggett has a master's degree in library and information science and a master's degree in business administration. Formerly the library manager at Helene Curtis/Unilever Home and Personal Care, she is now the manager of library and information services at UOP LLC, in Des Plaines, IL. She was president of the Special Libraries Association Illinois Chapter (2000-2001), is chair of The Conference Board Information Services Advisory Council, and is a director on the executive board of the North Suburban Library System. She lectures on special librarianship and knowledge management and will be teaching the Special Library Administration course at Dominican University in spring 2003. You can contact the author at claggett@mindspring.com.

Mark Your Brand

If librarians hope to stay in business (and I think we do), it is in our best interest to examine our brands and ourselves so we know what we're marketing before we market. Many librarians are astute marketers. We have planned, developed, and used a wide range of marketing media. To add impact to our marketing, whether we are new or experienced marketers, it is paramount that we understand our brand. We need to know who buys our brand and why. Whom do we compete with and what value does our brand offer against the competition? What does our brand stand for and why should people believe in it? When you know the answers to these questions, your marketing message can be more powerful, more meaningful, and more customer-focused.

During my 18-year career with a major consumer products company, I learned that to sell a product successfully you need three things—quality ingredients, a good brand-driven marketing strategy, and luck. Creating a brand-driven marketing strategy involves understanding your brand and the customers who buy it.

Having done the typical library marketing for many yearsnewsletters, brochures, alerts, surveys, open houses, presentations, intranets, and lots of giveaways—I wanted a fresh approach when Unilever acquired Helene Curtis. We had new users who were unfamiliar with our services, and we needed to send a strong, solid message to them. Since the company had top-notch marketers, we turned to the marketing department for help. What they shared with us was easy to apply to marketing the library.

An often-heard mantra at the company was "We don't sell products, we sell brands." Think about it. We don't buy soap; we buy Dove, Oil of Olay, or Irish Spring. A library or information center is like a well-known store brand. The library stands for something to our customers, and has a personality that conveys a message, whether we acknowledge it or not. The library competes with other products in the information marketplace, and we have loyal clients who choose our brand instead of the competition's. We also have qualitative and quantitative measures to prove our brand's position in the marketplace.

Exploring six key areas will help you identify your brand: competitive environment, target consumers, insight, values/personality, reasons to believe, and discriminator. To understand the library as a brand concept, substitute the word "library" wherever you see the word "brand"—it works 99 percent of the time.

Competitive Environment—the market and alternatives for the consumer, and the relative value your brand offers in that market.

For most, or maybe all, brands, there will always be competitors. In the supermarket, there is an overwhelming variety of spaghetti sauces on shelf; more cold cereals than I could ever imagine eating; and the abundance of snack chips now fills a whole aisle.

The market that special libraries compete in offers consumers many alternatives:

· Book stores

· Consultants

· Our consumers' colleagues

· Information brokers

· The Internet

· Other departments in the company (as you compete for funding)

· Outsourcing firms

· Public and academic libraries

Don't fool yourself by thinking that your company's employees don't have a free marketplace when it comes to library services. Their budgets may keep them from using external information brokers, but other libraries and the Internet are often-used options, especially when the benefits are just as good as the library's.

Is your brand better than the competition's? "Different" might be a better word. If you prefer Dove soap to Irish Spring, it's because you like the moisturizing effect, the fragrance, and/or the way Dove feels on your skin. Dove is a better brand for your particular needs, because it's different from any other soap on the market. It offers you something you can't buy elsewhere.

The relative value librarians offer varies from being experienced, knowledgeable information specialists, to providing the right information when it's needed, to analyzing search results and offering just-in-time delivery. Our competitors may offer some of the same services, but none of our competitors could match our expertise in the subject area we specialized in. Few other information specialistsand no fee-based outside information sources—knew the science, the marketplace, the history, and where to find information as well as we do.

Target Consumers—the individuals and needs for which the brand is always the best choice, defined in terms of consumers' attitudes and values, not just demographics.

Smart competitors know that it's unrealistic to expect every shopper to buy their brand. There are so many different brands on the supermarket shelves because there are so many different consumers to buy them. It is virtually impossible to be everything to everybody. You are better off knowing the consumers who prefer your brand, and tailoring your products and marketing efforts to keep them.

In the corporate library, when we tried to provide information services to all areas of the company (legal, marketing, manufacturing, human resources, competitive intelligence, administrative services, sales, information technology, research and development, public relations), we diluted our own knowledge, our collections were harder to manage, and we lost focus of our major customers' needs. (When 20 percent of the company's employees are 80 percent of your business, you need to measure your return on investment to see if serving others is a good or bad business decision.)

Who are your major consumers? They are people who use most of your services frequently and suggest new additions to the library often. Almost all of our major consumers worked in marketing, competitive intelligence, or research and development.

Here are some of the attitudes and values of our library's target consumers:

· Appreciate good customer service

· Can't find it elsewhere

· Driven to learn

· Don't have time to do it themselves

· Don't know where to go for information (not always a new employee)

· Have cost constraints in their own budgets

· Need information expertise, guidance, and direction

· Need information yesterday

· Need patent protection

· Need to validate information

Insights—all you know about your target consumers and their needs; the knowledge on which the brand is founded.

After you have identified your target consumers and their needs, think about what attracts them to your library. If the competitors you identified are readily available, why do your customers still choose to use your library? What keeps them loyal?

In our library, we identified the following:

· If we don't have it, we'll get it.

· Library customers can become more knowledgeable, leading to more informed decisions for the company's brands, which can positively affect the company's margins.

· Library services are particular to customers' needs.

· We offer free one-stop shopping (we don't charge back for our services).

· People want customization and we can provide it.

· We are in-house, accessible, right there.

· We are known entities.

· We are sensitive to confidentiality.

· We know what's important.

· We let customers know that they are the library's number-one priority.

· We understand RUSH.

· We understand the company's information needs and have anticipated those needs in many cases.

Values/Personality—the brand's values, what the brand stands for and believes in, and/or its personality.

The values and personality of the library may be the most interesting and revealing aspects to benchmark with your customers. Do they see you the way you see yourselves? We identified the following values/personality for our library:

· A can-do attitude

· Cutting-edge services

· Ethics, honesty

· Flexibility, non-bureaucratic

· Friendliness

· A more efficient way for employees to use their time

· Knowledge, experience

· Outstanding customer service

· Accurate information

· Pride in what we do

Reasons to Believe—the proof you offer to substantiate your brand's position.

· Go back to what you identified as insights and values/personality and think of ways you would prove those positions. Here is some of the proof we had:

· Customers' deadlines met or exceeded · Providing services tailored to customers' needs

· Lots of experience and knowledge in the industry (55 years)

· No forms to fill out when requesting information

· Part of the company community, which gives us credibility

· Striving for the same corporate goals as others in the company

· Staff attends relevant training on a continuing basis

· Having materials on the shelves when needed

· Positive attitudes

· Positive word of mouth/large number of repeat customers

· Many customer success stories for improved productivity/decision making by using the library

· 24/7 access to the library

Discriminator—the single most compelling reason for the consumer to choose your brand.

It is difficult to pick only one reason for the consumer to pick your library, but in doing so you will find that you have a credible message to communicate and a position to uphold. Our discriminator: We are highly knowledgeable information experts in all facets of our industry with 55 years of combined experience.

Conclusion

To do this exercise, you need to be open, honest, and immodest. If you're good, you're good. Don't be too shy to admit it. Our library team spent an afternoon brainstorming all six key areas. A few days later, we got together again and condensed our responses. We ended up with an understanding of who we are, who our customers are, and how our library differs from the competition.

The next steps in a logical and thorough brand strategy would be to do the same exercise with customer focus groups and then perform metrics (see sidebar) to measure the effectiveness of your branding efforts.

Marketing is a never-ending process. Even a casual conversation about the library, with the right person at work, is marketing. Identifying our brand results in shared knowledge from which everyone benefits. It gives us a unified understanding of who we are and what we do, and ensures that everyone on the library team communicates the same message.