“Anytime PBS or NPR are doing something they’re going to be promoting across the country, we certainly want to get on board with that,” says Susan Tran, Director of Corporate Support and Marketing Manager for Maine Public, a state network of public television and radio stations. She quotes the aphorism: “Many hands makes light work.”
When her staff got word that PBS would launch the eight-part Great American Read series in September, they began thinking of fun ways to publicize the project. “We were brainstorming about Maine and summer and reading and then we started talking about beach reads,” she says. What if they could get a local bookstore to give Maine Public a discounted price on some of the novels in the GAR’s “Top 100”? And what if they promoted the series by heading to local beaches and handing those books out, for free, to random beachgoers?
“That’s essentially what we did,” Susan says.
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