I Love Literacy

I worked at Ooligan’s booth at the Love of Literacy conference in Salem this past Friday. The exhibitor’s room was set up in a specific conference room, and there were a number of other organizations with booths from Northwest Children and Family Services to a woman that has a whole program teaching babies sign language. We were there to promote our newest title, Classroom Publishing. As this was a conference for educators, it seemed the perfect venue to get the word out about this book.

It was interesting to see the ways different groups were exhibiting. Most of the booths had books and other goods for sale, although some were there to promote a program. There were a lot of brochures, bookmarks, free pens, and stress balls, and other collateral being given out to. Most people that went through the room took the free stuff being offered. Ooligan had some small notebooks that were blank inside, and had information about Classroom Publishing printed on the back.

What I noticed was that while people stopped to pick up free stuff, the booths they stayed the longest at were those that had some sort of media display as well. Several of the exhibitors had videos playing on their laptops from the Internet. One booth may have been playing a video on a small TV. But people were definitely interested in the visual displays. I think we should consider this when we are thinking about any kind of marketing, even if it is face-to-face. Of course, it is necessary to have a person there who can engage with the customer and answer questions, but we should remember that people still like to have something to look at. It is fairly simple to create (or find) a video on YouTube that relates to a product you are promoting—which can be used both in online and in-person marketing/sales.