Title	100% COVID FREE JOURNEY
Brand	POREC CITY LIBRARY
Product/Service	CITY LIBRARY
Category	B03. Posters
Entrant	STUDIO SONDA Istria, CROATIA
Idea Creation	STUDIO SONDA Istria, CROATIA
Production	STUDIO SONDA Istria, CROATIA

Name	Company	Position
Jelena Fiskus	Studio Sonda d.o.o.	Creative Director, Copywriter, Design
Sean Poropat	Studio Sonda d.o.o.	Creative Director, Designer, Copywriter
Aleksandar Zivanov	Studio Sonda d.o.o.	Designer
Simon Flegar	Studio Sonda d.o.o.	Junior Designer
Rafaela Kerin	Studio Sonda d.o.o.	Account Manager
Mladen Gvozden	Studio Sonda d.o.o.	Account Manager
Denis Tomljanovic	Synet	Web Development
Albert Jedrejcic	Studio Sonda	Statistics

Background

City libraries around the world have been considered as old-fashioned. In Croatia, there was a -19.11% decline in active book borrowers from 2017 to 2019. In accordance with the national trend, the city library in the tourist city of 17,000 inhabitants, recorded a decline in both book-borrowing and membership. City library holds a used book festival every year but in 2020 the festival was in jeopardy because of pandemic. We’ve used a set of used posters to promote a festival of used books. A problem that we tackled was to make the small city library achieve its goal and become more attractive to its users, to encourage existing members to come and borrow more often and to attract new members, all of that during COVID pandemic.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

On the one hand we have the library with a decrease in new memberships/loans, and on the other hand there are the inhabitants of a tourist town that traditionally award themselves with a journey after summer season, but facing lockdown in 2020. Since the book is a journey, and we needed to promote a “Festival of used books” we asked travel agencies to give us their posters, which they didn’t have the chance to use (COVID). Then we linked posters with books, inviting the citizens to travel (example: Travel to Greece with Iliad and the Odyssey) On posters there were QR codes, leading to the web page conceived as a “booking system”. So, users could find destination, book, depart, send a post card and even receive a gratis journey (a book from the library fund of written-off books)! Through used posters, we’ve managed to promote the Festival of used books!

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

During autumn library has been transformed into a “travel agency”. Real travel agencies’ posters were used to inform people. We asked agencies to donate their posters, which they didn’t have the chance to use in 2020, because of COVID. Than we linked them with book titles and stuck with graphic elements common for traveling materials (airplane tags). Through posters users were informed they could actually travel to Greece(Iliad and the Odyssey/Homer), Paris(The belly of Paris/Emile Zola)… or wherever they want! With such a small intervention we actually managed to show a power of travel by reading a book. We did it without spending money on new posters because we’ve used the old ones. Posters were in a library and all over the town, in advertising spaces that city of Poreč donated. On posters there were QR codes, leading to the web page conceived as a “travel booking system”.

List the results (20% of vote)

Thanks to activation with posters, we distributed all books from the written-off fund and we made Festival of used books possible. Also, we showed that the library is an open institution which cares about needs of its fellow citizens. We achieved some record numbers: Q4 2020 vs Q4 2019 (during and after campaign): New entrants: +194.40% Book Loans: +221.74%. After a continuous decline in recent years (-10.3%2019 vs 2018), in 2020 vs 2019. we managed to have + 34.90% of new entrants, although the library was closed for 50 days! More budget funding from the county +25% for 2021. During the intensive promotion of the campaign (October '20), the number of visits to the website increased by +17% vs the same period '19, and after the end of the campaign, by as much as +40%. Facebook: organic reach increased by +23.91%, Page engaged users +39.19%, People talking about it +38.15%.