Mission Success: Carrollton Receives Branding Iron Award

Promotional efforts for the City's new online Library catalog earned Carrollton a State-level Branding Iron Award in Digital Marketing from the Texas Library Association (TLA).

The Branding Iron Awards honor creative marketing and public relations projects and activities for library services, programs, and events. TLA provides recognition in five categories: Fundraising Marketing, Annual Report, and Strategic Plan; Special Events and Exhibits Marketing; Print Marketing; Digital Marketing; and Reading Programs. Carrollton won for Digital Marketing, which recognizes promotion through mediums such as social media, email, websites, and other web-based platforms.

The City's Marketing Services and Library teams collaborated to create an out-of-this-world campaign for the April 2025 launch of the highly anticipated software offering user-requested features and improved functionality.

Judges from TLA evaluated the campaign's creativity, clarity, and efficacy. The graphics featured space-themed rocket imagery and language to play on the idea of a launch and drive interest. Staff featured this theme throughout the campaign, including in a reel-style video for social media that saw two Library staff members suit up as astronauts to give residents a stellar mission briefing on what to expect from the new catalog.

In planning the communications, staff demonstrated a clear plan of action through objectives for engagement on platforms such as the City website, social media, Carrollton Connection eNewsletter, and the Library's own Library Link eNewsletter. Finally, the campaign achieved effective reach through both newsletters' above-average open rates and a 30 percent increase in website traffic to the library catalog homepage, compared to the previous year.

"We are honored to receive a Branding Iron Award," Brittni Barnett, Carrollton Public Library (CPL) Community Engagement Supervisor, said. "The new catalog software was a long-time coming, and we wanted to ensure patrons knew that we had listened to their feedback and could look forward to the exciting new features they requested. Using all the platforms available to us, especially digital ones, allowed us to inform a wide audience in anticipation of the launch."

The Texas Library Association is the largest state library association in the U.S., committed to embracing, uniting, and amplifying voices of the library community through advocacy and education to ensure library excellence for all Texans. The association provides opportunities for professional development and collaboration between libraries across the state. Branding Iron Award winners will be featured in TLA's summer edition of the Texas Library Journal.

For more information about CPL, including to access the Library catalog, visit cityofcarrollton.com/library.