Publicity

Publicity hints for shadowing the Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals

THINK ABOUT THE ANGLES THAT MIGHT INTRIGUE YOUR LOCAL MEDIA:

• The fun, pictorial side of lots of children with lots of books
• Individual stories of a child's passion for a particular book
• Opinionated children disagreeing with adult judges
• The issue of "do children read any more"
• A local version of a key national process, the most prestigious and democratic of the children's book prizes
• The link with literacy strategies - encouraging reading for pleasure.
• The inclusion of issue based books - the role of literature in helping children make difficult life choices.
• A Youth Libraries Group judge from the national panel in your area
• Any local writers who are on the shortlist
• Any books on the shortlist set locally
• Pastoral aspects of your exercise (e.g. the raising of the self esteem of special needs children)
• Educationally interesting aspects to your shadowing process
• Children attending the London awards ceremony

THINK ABOUT THE KINDS OF JOURNALIST WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED:

• Your local television and radio stations may have an education or arts correspondent, who could be invited to lunch, a workshop, the judging session etc.
• Does the editor of your local paper have any children? Could they be invited to join the judging process? Could the paper offer workshop space on a Saturday morning?
• Women's Pages, children's pages, arts section or unusual parts of the paper
• Journalists who might be interested in structuring a competition around the shadowing process, maybe publishing winning reviews etc.

THINK ABOUT THE KEY TIMES TO GET THE MEDIA INVOLVED:

• Ideally right at the beginning, so they have a personal interest in what's going on from the start
• Otherwise, the national shortlisting stage, your own judging sessions and the announcement of the winners in June.

GETTING MEDIA COVERAGE:

• Sending a press release is rarely enough to secure really interesting coverage. You need one as the backbone of your approach to the media, but you need to follow up vigorously with 'phone calls, send accompanying letters etc.
• A press release should outline, in the first two paragraphs:

  What is happening
  Why it's happening, why it's interesting
  Who is involved
  Where it is happening

Use the shortlist press release as a starting point, linking in your own experiences.

Having got a powerful, intriguing message in the first two paragraphs, go on to amplify the story in the rest of the release. Try to keep it to one side of A4.

Give a contact name and number at the end, make sure the number will always be answered.

Date the release, even if you just say "Spring of 2012"

Please send us a copy of any release at the address below. We may be able to weave your activity into a national story:

The Marketing Department
CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Managers
7 Ridgmount StreetLondon WCIA 7AE
Telephone: 020 7255 0650
Fax: 020 7255 0651
e-mail: ckg@cilip.org.uk

Latest News

Resources

Publicity Downloads