Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com, and it’s my pleasure to be here with Casey Clarke Radican, who is in charge of Marketing for the Government Printing Office. Welcome.
Casey Clarke: Thank you.
Cary Sherburne: You know, I first became acquainted with you, at least by name through EDSF where you were the recipient of a number of scholarships through them. And I remember on your applications, you had a lofty goal, can you share what that was?
Casey Clarke: Yeah, since Norm and I have arrived at GPO, my goal has been to become the very first woman public printer. I arrived under Mr. Bruce James and if you visit GPO in Washington D.C., there is a wall of all the public printers that came before him and now Mr. Tapel as well, and the first thing I said was, something’s missing. And Mr. James asked me, what do you think is missing? I said, “Well, not one of them is a woman.” And so from that moment on, I decided that my goal and my time at GPO will be spent working towards that goal of becoming the very first woman public printer.
Cary Sherburne: And how long have you been there?
Casey Clarke: Almost seven years now.
Cary Sherburne: And you’re still – that’s still a goal.
Casey Clarke: I’m still going, yep.
Cary Sherburne: That’s great. Marketing at GPO, you think about marketing sometimes more in the private sector, so tell me a little bit about what kinds of efforts you do to market at the GPO.
Casey Clarke: Sure, well my role really is focusing on the agency customers that we work with, it’s 170 plus federal agencies including the commissions and bureaus within those agencies, and the biggest challenge we have marketing to those agencies, of course, is our money, of course, comes from taxpayers, which we are very careful about how we use that money when we’re going out and making marketing decisions, but also when we go out and choose marketing channels and mediums and of course our message, we want to make sure that we are speaking to all the policies and procedures that come into term – we’re talking about the federal government. So we have to make sure that all of our “I’s” are dotted, all of our ‘T’s” are crossed and make sure that we are running ourselves as a federal agency that is backed up by law, but also making sure that we’re giving value to our customers and our marketing message and making sure that they know that we are not the same GPO that maybe came across in former years, that now we’re innovative, we’re future-thinking, we’re making a lot of strides in the digital world, and that’s what we spend our time trying to do is we really brand awareness and with some of the free marketing tools going on right now, we can also do some really cool social media stuff and other marketing things as well.
Cary Sherburne: And if I wanted to follow GPO on Twitter, for example, what do I do, add GPO?
Casey Clarke: Yep, USGPO is our –
Cary Sherburne: USGPO.
Casey Clarke: Is our name and you can find us on there, we also have a book blog, Book Talk, it’s all right there on our website, and you can also visit us on YouTube, we have our own channel and have about 25 videos up there right now.
Cary Sherburne: Oh, that’s great. And so in terms of the agencies then, if an agency has a project, maybe they have a – maybe it’s a health program they’re trying to promote or something like that, you would get all of the characteristics of that project and would you ever print – excuse me, produce that in-house or do those kinds of things always get outsourced?
Casey Clarke: It really depends. We basically can assist the customer, the agency customer, doing anything from actual design, whether that might be print or maybe have web component there, a multi-media component. Then to print, which may not go to our contractor to procurement, it might come in-house to our plant, depending on the product. And then we also can assist them if they need to get it into the public’s hands to our sales and marketing department with our library side gets it into the Repository Library Program gets it into the public’s hands through their GPO book store and anything the customer brings up is an idea to get the product. Maybe they have an event that’s going on to support the book or the theme of the book, if its health, we also will show up there and help them push the book at those events and anything really that they come up with, we’re happy to do.
Cary Sherburne: It sounds like a really fun job.
Casey Clarke: It’s great. I love it. I actually a lot of fun.
Cary Sherburne: And then let’s see now, what should I expect, three years, five years, how long before you’re a public printer?
Casey Clarke: Well, I’ve been told to slow my horses a little bit because I was guaranteeing five to seven years on my timeline, but I’m actually – if it happens in the next five or seven years, that’ll be way ahead of schedule and perfect by me. But I think 15 is probably a little bit more realistic to make sure I’ve got the background and political sense to go for it.
Cary Sherburne: We’ll look forward to it.
Casey Clarke: Thank you.
Cary Sherburne: Thank you very much.
