How can we communicate the wide range of learning opportunities available for our customers in a clear, succinct way, using language that they understand? This was a challenge identified in creating this campaign. In 2017, the library learned through polling that only 36 of those surveyed in the county were able to identify Anythink as their public library unprompted. This opportunity for growth helped drive the creation of a new public awareness campaign.

“My Place To …” uses a fill-in-the-blank approach that juxtaposes text against visual backdrops in order to highlight the myriad of library experiences. The structure of the campaign allows it to be serious and reflective, clever and playful, or whimsical and fun, while also allowing the viewer to interact directly with it. In-branch promotions were targeted to current users of the library to explain the range of experiences available to them. External promotions were designed to introduce non-users to the library.

In the campaign’s first year, Anythink saw an 8% increase in new library cards over the previous time period. In more recent polling, 54% of those polled were able to identify Anythink as their public library. Traffic to anythinklibraries.org from Facebook increased 29% and traffic from YouTube increased over 5,600% during this same time period. On Facebook, “My Place To …” posts reached more than 40,000 people and videos combined have received hundreds of thousands of views.