What's the Point?

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I am in the position of having two interests that need marketing, my job and my husband's business. When I started doing programming at the library, we couldn't do enough. Storytimes were increasing to satisfy demand. Now, there are times when no one shows up. There are a number of reasons for this, one of which is, unbelievably, that there are still people out there who don't know what the library does despite newspaper, radio, and posters. All this talk of viral marketing seems like the last hope - but none of it seems to work. And Gladwell's book seems to explain why.
There are just three factors to tip something over the edge: the influential few, stickiness, and context. There was some context we had no control over. The rules for transporting children changed and became much more stringent. Home Child Care people were no longer able to bring their charges to a storytime. We still had a few of the larger corporate facilities that could transport, but fewer came. If the smaller ones can't afford it or aren't able, you cut out a huge audience. And if the kids can't say they went to the library that day, the parents stop thinking about it. We are doing outreach to the bigger groups, but it isn't the same.
We finally have someone in our department who is a connector. This can help. I'm not sure what could be sticky about library programming.
This book started off being exciting, but I lost that interest as I went on (and it's not that long of a book). Eventually, I was only vaguely interested on how demonizing cigarettes and other drugs has absolutely, positively not worked and just glanced over the rest.

Thinking further about marketing needs here, while a new library will raise our profile, that's a factor that will lose its sheen after a while. [I'm still annoyed by the patron who said, "No offense, but this is the most depressing library I've ever been in." I've been in lots more depressing libraries than this. I thought our children's room was pretty colorful and had lots of interesting features!] If the general public is anything like me, they go home and stay there. It's just too exhausting to go out again. If their kids aren't lobbying to go to the library, very few will venture out of the cocoon. While we have an annual library card drive for the youngest kids in school, how many of those actually come in once they've received their card? We have anecdotal stories of parents being dragged in by a kid that's just gotten a card, but if all the kids who received library cards since I've been typing them up have come in, why are there any books on these shelves at all?
It's stickiness. We need to work on that.

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