BHL Marketing & Outreach Ideas
Marketing Achievements Thus Far
- Weekly tweets with NMNH
- 2 Blog posts with nmnh
- inclusion of BHL in online & print NMNH calendar
- bhl banner
- bhl buttons
- bhl life & lit swag
- bhl institution specific banners
- bhl business cards
- bhl calendar
- Facebook timeline
- BHL Blog
- Facebook
- Twitter
Introduction to BHL:
Biodiversity Heritage Library Introduction.pdf
BHL Flickr Handout:
BHL Flickr Handout.pdf
Marketing Ideas
- Tweet Campaigns with BHL institutions (i.e. contact social media representatives at BHL institutions & provide regular BHL tweets for them to post – expand current NMNH campaign)
- BHL on institutional blogs (i.e. contact blog representatives & coordinate writing posts relevant to institution but about BHL to post on their blogs – expand current NMNH campaign)
- Collaborate with institutions on upcoming exhibits (physical or online) to incorporate BHL
- Thematic Campaigns (i.e. Women’s History Month)
- Wallpaper/Screensavers with BHL images
- Calendar with images and significant biodiversity events (Darwin’s birthday, etc.)
- Make thematic collections/galleries in Flickr (eg. Animals of Ancient Egypt, holidays. Etc.)
- Holiday ecards like SI Zoo
- Coloring book and crayons with BHL logo (Outreach & Education Option)
- Trading cards with image of a species on front, info on back (Outreach & Education option)
- Postcards with a species and a map of country/area they are found.
- BHL wrapping paper
- Catch phrase ideas, maybe? BeHoLd
- Cool QR codes (they also have a way to do shapes, like animal shapes)
- Temporary tattoos with BHL images (Outreach & Education option)
- Games, such as “Find the Differences” or “What’s Wrong with this species?” (i.e. place 2 BHL images side by side, change elements in one, and instruct people to find the differences; take BHL images of species, alter the species in certain ways & instruct people to identify what aspects of the species are incorrect) (Outreach & Education option)
- BHL Stickers
- Kitchy clothing (or perhaps run competitions for T-Shirt designs via threadless.com, using BHL images)
Outreach Ideas
BHL's Visual Identity
With the advent of a new logo, the BHL team would like to revisit BHL's visual identity, hoping to create a more coherent, iconic visual representation of the project that can be used across all BHL materials, including website graphics, reports, brochures, business cards, and marketing swag.
Ideas and Directions:
- The colors dominant in such designs will be the blue hues seen in the new logo.
- We want to move away from the strictly cut-out image identity that we have had for some time and incorporate more imagery that shows illustrations as they are within an actual book, i.e. images of whole pages rather than cut outs of the images
- Incorporate more scientific illustration and dissection-type illustrations (i.e. pages that show multiple butterfly wings, front and back, rather than single organism on a single page)
- incorporate imagery that shows the broader reach of BHL - i.e. imagery from horticulture, agriculture, fox hunting, etc.
- incorporate the use of "illuminated letters," as with SIL's picturing words
- for background images - blank pages from books showing texture and weathering of paper as background to put text and other content on (i.e. background in powerpoint presentations)
- incorporate more use of end papers in design
- incorporate the use of more text pages, particularly interesting or elaborate text pages
- start looking for broader-type images to use, such as garden designs, etc.
- Come up with pool of iconic images that we want to use continually throughout BHL visual design
- incorporate the use of some extinct animals, as for many of these, BHL is one of the only records of their existence
Pool of Images:
Brainstorming Marketing Ideas from the March 15 BHL IC Meeting
At the BHL IC Meeting, staff presented some of the marketing projects BHL has done recently and had an open brainstorming session allowing IC Members to discuss what marketing projects they would like to see BHL perform in the future. Below is a bulleted list of the outcome of these discussions:
- Put together a cafepress storefront containing products like the ones in the handout (see above "Marketing Ideas"). These could either to for people to purchase at cost, with no revenue to BHL, or set up as a BHL store with revenue generated for BHL. Would need to figure out the logistics of where the money goes if we set it up as a revenue stream, however. USGS has one that does not generate revenue.
- There was a general consensus that BHL should work more frequently with partner institution's PR departments to capitalize on that relationship and encourage them to post as many things as possible about BHL through their media streams. This includes the official PR departments, which might be more difficult to get approved content through, or the social media departments, which should prove an easier, lower barrier avenue for collaboration.
- Richard Huffine suggested using a Quickstarter or Kickstarter which helps businesses develop social media marketing campaigns and create contacts in social media.
- Graham Higley suggested that, for our newsletters, we should focus them more towards our scientist users than, say, educational or humanities users. They are still our core audience.
- Bianca suggested that we need to define our audiences and develop strategies for reaching specific audiences. Grace suggested that this would be one of the first components of the BHL Marketing and Branding plan.
- Connie and others suggested making institution-specific BHL Banners and Business Cards
- Judy brought up the question: How do we market to students, particularly many of the academic institutions that would have an obvious student audience?
- Richard and Jean both brought up the comment that BHL should, as we suggested, be present at as many conferences as possible, and be working with contacts at as many societies as possible to promote BHL. Some that were mentioned include:
