“Curiosity Isn’t Quiet” helped King County Library System rethink what library marketing can look like. And the results are remarkable!
Libraries spend a lot of time talking to people who already love libraries. King County Library System wanted to do something different.
KCLS serves more than 1.6 million residents through 50 libraries just outside Seattle. But after several leadership changes and turnover within its Communications and Marketing department, the organization saw an opportunity to rethink how it told its story.
The goal wasn’t simply to promote programs or convince existing patrons to attend another event. It was to get people who hadn’t visited a library in years — or perhaps had never visited at all — to reconsider what a public library could offer them.
So KCLS embarked on a campaign built around a deceptively simple idea:
Curiosity Isn’t Quiet.
And the results? Chase Gallager, Director of Communications and Marketing at KCLS, says, “A 22-point jump in brand awareness across non-members. And among our members, they were increasingly convinced that their public investment is worth it.”
“For an institution serving 1.5 million people across King County, those aren’t vanity metrics. That’s people rediscovering something they’ve forgotten was theirs.”
Chase was gracious enough to share how his library did it, so you can replicate this at your library.
Starting With a Question
The campaign began in September 2024 with a question that plagues many libraries: What do people who aren’t library users actually know about us?
KCLS wanted to reconnect with its community and “reinvigorate our marketing with a fresh campaign to drive awareness of KCLS and reconnect with our patrons.”
But the team didn’t want to rely on assumptions about what the community knew or didn’t know about the library. So they did some research.
KCLS surveyed both patrons and non-patrons to establish a baseline for brand awareness and awareness of specific library services. That research helped the team identify opportunities to showcase services that people might not associate with a modern public library.
As part of the campaign development process, KCLS brought together leadership and staff from across the organization for brainstorming sessions. The goal was to make a list of everything the library does for its community.
“Starting with leadership and staff from around the organization, we held brainstorming sessions to chart out all the things that our libraries do every day for patrons,” recalls Chase.
Chase says the collaborative process did more than generate ideas. It built trust and support internally for the campaign’s development.
That turned out to be important because KCLS wasn’t simply creating a new advertising campaign. It was changing the way the organization thought about marketing.
Meet “Curiosity Isn’t Quiet”
Eventually, the team landed on “Curiosity Isn’t Quiet.” The line works on several levels.
It plays with the traditional image of the library as a place where everyone is expected to whisper. But it also reframes curiosity as something active, energetic, and even a little disruptive.
Chase says that ultimately, the campaign became “both a playfully tongue-in-cheek reference to the hushed library hallways of the past, and an invitation to our audience to be bold and inquisitive.”
Marketing to People Who Aren’t Already Library Users
One of the biggest strategic decisions Chase and his team made was to focus on people who weren’t already regular library users.
That meant the library couldn’t simply rely on the channels and messages it had traditionally used to communicate with existing patrons. It needed to compete for attention.
Chase said the messaging was designed to reach people “who hadn’t set foot in a branch in years, maybe ever.”
“Surgically Targeted” Advertising
KCLS has historically spent an average of about $327,000 a year on advertising since 2022. That sounds like a lot to many libraries (including mine!), but it comes out to roughly $0.25 per person in its service area.
For “Curiosity Isn’t Quiet,” the team decided to make that money work harder. Rather than primarily boosting organic social media content or relying on broad-reach broadcast advertising, KCLS shifted to a social, video-first strategy.
“We worked to develop thoughtful targeting focused on our service area, as opposed to broadcast mediums that had historically spread our advertising dollars too thin.”
Chase says the library used more efficient ad types that are favored by the algorithms.
The result? KCLS cut the cost of its digital advertising by 66 percent, meaning the library could reach far more people without increasing its advertising budget. That’s a pretty compelling argument for being more strategic about who sees your advertising.
And the campaign wasn’t just about paid media. KCLS also brought in a new social media strategist shortly after the campaign launched.
“She brought fresh thinking and smart strategy to our social content,” says Chase.
The combination of targeted advertising and a stronger organic social strategy helped drive rapid growth in social engagement, including more than 50 percent growth on Instagram during the year.
The Number That Should Get Your Attention
The headline result from the campaign was dramatic: Brand awareness among non-members increased by 22 points.
That number came from comparing the baseline brand survey conducted at the beginning of the campaign with another survey conducted nearly a year later.
Because brand awareness is the central objective, Chase and his team plan to continue monitoring perception, awareness of specific library services, and other measures through additional surveys.
The Library Card Became a Piece of Art
One of the most delightful parts of the campaign was a completely different kind of marketing opportunity: the library card.
Many of KCLS’s library card designs were more than a decade old. So, the library partnered with local artists to create seven new library card designs. The team created video interviews with each artist, giving patrons a chance to hear the stories and perspectives behind the artwork.
The response was outstanding: The new cards depleted KCLS’s annual supply in just a few months.
New library cards are sometimes treated as a marketing gimmick. But here’s Chase and his team have to say about that.
“There isn’t always going to be a return on investment on revamping library cards,” says Chase. “Seeing smiling patrons with their new miniature pieces of art will always win us over.”
Curiosity Became a Summer Reading Strategy
The “Curiosity Isn’t Quiet” campaign didn’t stay confined to advertising.
KCLS used one of the concepts developed during the campaign — “Curious Creatures” — as the foundation for a new kids’ summer reading program. The library reconsidered its reading incentives and introduced a branded Welcome Kit box as part of the experience.
The results were striking. In 2024, KCLS had approximately 12,000 summer reading finishers across the system. In 2025, more than 30,000 readers had signed up, with the numbers continuing to grow through the end of July. That’s more than double the previous year’s number.
And it illustrates something important: A strong brand idea can become a platform for many different campaigns and initiatives.
Not Everything Went Smoothly
Of course, even a highly successful campaign comes with challenges. For KCLS, one of the biggest was production.
“Internally producing creative requires a lot of planning, and often we ran up against deadlines,” remembers Chase.
As a small internal team, maintaining the production pipeline remains a challenge. The library is now looking for ways to improve that process and stay ahead of deadlines.
There was also some internal confusion about the campaign itself. In particular, some staff members thought the “Curiosity Isn’t Quiet” icon was the library’s new logo.
I can relate to that problem, and it highlights an important lesson for libraries considering a major brand campaign: Changing how you market externally can also require significant internal communication.
When you’re introducing a new visual identity for a campaign, staff need to understand what it is, what it isn’t, and how it fits into the larger organizational brand.
“It’s a challenge to break preconceived notions, internally and externally,” admits Chase. “Often it takes a team working together to show a new path forward for library marketing.”
“We have learned to think big, lean into the sparks of creativity that come from brainstorming, and give new things a shot.”
The Most Important Result Might Be Hard to Measure
The numbers are impressive. But Chase says some of the best results aren’t numbers at all.
“We’ve seen a rapid increase in social engagement,” he points out. “It’s getting such amazing feedback and joy from our patrons with their new library cards, or spotting the campaign in the wild.”
To me, that’s the amazing part. Because it’s one thing for someone to see an ad because you paid to put it in front of them. It’s another thing for them to recognize your campaign when they encounter it in an unexpected place. And that recognition is exactly what brand awareness is supposed to accomplish!
What Other Libraries Can Learn From This Campaign
So what should another library do if it wants to move beyond promoting individual programs and start building a true brand campaign? Chase says, you have to start with the library staff.
“Start internally to build excitement and gain alignment with staff, especially in organizations absent other cohesive marketing campaigns,” he advises.
What I learned from writing this post is: Curiosity isn’t quiet. And neither is a library brand that knows what it wants to say.
Want more help?
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