Filling Your Marketing Toolbox: Home

World Café directions

Overview: This activity is great for fostering small group discussion where multiple answers exist for a specific question. Creativity is highly encouraged during this modality.

Materials: tables, flip chart paper, pens and pencils, printed paper with questions

Set Up: Cover each table with flip chart paper. Leave a handful of markers (more markers than participants) at each table along with a printed sheet of paper including topical questions.

Instructions: “Welcome to World Café. Our primary goal is to have deep conversations about questions that matter. Each of you is sitting by a table with a marketing challenge. There is also a person there who will be your table's host. Hosts, raise your hands. You job is to present the challenge to the group and provide the group with your expertise and personal experience. After 20 minutes, participants will be asked to switch groups. The host will stay to catch the new participants up on the conversation. We will do this for 3 rounds.

Be sure to let the hosts know that they should encourage their table mates to write their ideas down. Drawings are a bonus.

Challenges at the tables:

Taina's table: The Governor is doing a rare public appearance in your neighborhood to talk with social workers that you have partnered with in the past. Your goal is to get press coverage of your library's work in improving services in the community.

Kerstin's table: You work at a public library with the mission statement of, "Transforming Lives, Enriching Neighborhoods, and Preserving History."* Your goal is to develop a new program series that aligns with the mission.

Courtney's table: You work at a library system and want to start a group for library staff to meet up on a regular basis to talk about a shared aspect of their profession (ie - cataloging.) The meetings will take place in a conference room and don't generate dynamic images. Your goal is to get this group formed and promote the ongoing meeting.

Jen's table: You work at a college library and want to start a new information literacy program for freshman students.  Any branded materials have to go through the college's marketing department first. Your goal is to have 15 students sign up.

Sarah's table: Your organization just got a windfall of $5,000! It's earmarked for "getting the word out about our services," and the only stipulation is that you need to show data. Your goal is to create a marketing plan to use that money wisely.

* This is the actual mission statement of the New Orleans Public Library

** The only details the participants at the table have are outlined here. It's up to the group to decide if their library/organization is real or fictional, and if their assets or constraints are real or fictional. One request - once you decide who & where you are, try to stay consistent.

• Taina Evans, Brooklyn Public Library - Keynote Speaker on action as marketing
• Charlene Martoni - panel discussion, setting up a strategic social media plan
• Courtney Wimmers, Mid-Hudson Library System - panel discussion, engaging with social media
• Jen Park, Mount Saint Mary College - panel discussion, assessing your marketing plan
• Kristen Thronton-Desafeno, White Plains Public Library - e-newsletters
• Sarah Wassberg, Hudson River Maritime Museum - closing remarks on improving marketing and communications
• Ellie Burhans, Hudson River  Maritime Museum - closing remarks on improving marketing and communications
• Kerstin Cruger, Mid-Hudson Library System - committee member