museummarketing.info

The cultural season is starting with mini exhibition in cargo container.

In Amsterdam every year at the last weekend of August the cultural Season opens with the Uitmarkt festival. The Uitmarkt is held from August 29 - 31 at the Eastern Harbour area in Amsterdam. Three days with over 400 previews of different artists, performing on 34 stages. And of course the Tropenmuseum is also present. This year our great cultural sponsor the BankGiro Loterij made a so called castle of cargo containers where a a lot of museums could present themselves. We decided to give a preview of our next exhibition called ‘Vodou, art & mysticism from Haiti’. We were showing a real Dutch Vodou priest, a Vodou altar and pictures of the objects that will be on display. To enhance the(marketing) experience people can send a vodou postcard for free to anybody they want.

A lot of people pass by on these days so this is a big chance to present ourselves to the public. But to be frank I really hate these kind of trade fair/market stall things. Why? I always wonder if it has any effectiveness at all. Since I am working, every year or so, some boss asks me to present his company on a trade fair or some market stall. In my experience selling your organization on these kinds of events is a different way of communicating. It requires a lot of effort/money to do this the right way. And money and time is always lacking. So what questions do you have to ask before you are going to present yourself on a trade fair:

1. What goals do you have?
What is the purpose of being on a trade fair? is it awareness(brrr) or a clear goal like collecting email addresses, selling tickets etc.

2. Who is the targetgroup?

3. What are you selling?
The Tropenmuseum has 7 exhibitions a year, 60 events, 20 educational programs, etc, etc. The best thing is to focus on one or a few of them.

4. Any way to give a follow up?
Maybe you can collect email addresses and send people an email when a specific exhibitions starts.

5. How can you stand out between other booths?
Maybe some great design will help…

6. Is your staff ready and knowledgeable?
Staff is very important to make a good impression on your potential visitors. A lot of time on trade fairs I see staff talking with each other, blocking the entrance of a booth, eating, badly dressed and being very rude.

Most of the time (in my experience) the only focus is on the design of the exhibition and all other questions are just forgotten or skipped.

And here some pictures of the Tropenmuseum at the Uitmarkt.

Some extra information:
Tips on attending a trade fair

In the beginning of 2008 the Tropenmuseum participated in a coupon action with ETOS one of the biggest drugstore companies in the Netherlands. For every 15 euro’s spend at ETOS you would get a coupon. With this coupon the second ticket at several theme parks (and a museum) would be free of charge. In three weeks there were 450.000 coupons distributed to customers of ETOS. Eventually several hundred spend there coupon at the Tropenmuseum.

Almost every week I am called by a company, or a PR company who is representing that company, if want to participate in a coupon action. Most of the time a company is searching for a nice offering for their customers. No money is exchanged between us and the company who offer the coupons. It is a so called barter deal. The benefit for us is extra exposure to that specific customer base. I turn down a lot of requests to participate. I have made some criteria to consider when asked to participate in coupon action:

1. Brand strength of the company handing out the Coupons. Can this brand lift your own brand up or bring your brand down? Participating in a coupon action with a mom and pop store is probably not a good idea.
2. Products/services the company offers. Heineken is a strong brand, but would we do coupons targeted at children if they would ask us?
3. Reach of the coupon action. What is the size of the audience for this coupon action.
4. Targetgroup. Is the target group extending beyond your normal customer base?
5. Other companies who are joining in. If the coupon is valid for several other museums, theme parks or any other leisure activity are they on the same brand/value level as you.
6. Can our staff handle anymore actions. All those coupons have to be checked at the cashier. To many actions drives them wild.
7. Action conditions. Is it a small discount (20%) or a huge one (second ticket for free)

When you choose to participate I have also made a practical checklist to use when the coupons are designed. These items on this checklist are not always needed but choose wisely when you don’t put them on the coupon.

1. Logo of your museum
2. Picture of the museum/exhibition/event?
3. Address
4. Opening times
5. Barcode/Action code
6. End date of the action
7. Action conditions

A final tip: Always approve the final design of the coupon.

In 2006 the Tropenmuseum decided to change their summer offerings. We always experienced a slowdown in number of visitors attending our museum. Our main yearly exhibition was already standing for 6 months when the summer came and all the Dutch went out on a holiday. We decided to make a special summer program starting in May. With performing arts in our museum in the months May/June. In July/August we focused especially on children with ages between 4-12 years old and in September we organized special events to reach out to certain niches.

The special children activities in the summer were an instant success. In the Netherlands children of primary schools get 6 weeks off. So as a parent you go on a three week holiday with your kids and the other 3 weeks you thrive away boredom with doing some occasional fun stuff…like visiting a museum. And what helps is that we can have very rainy summers in Amsterdam.

How did we start with the campaign for 2008? We copied and pasted our original 2006/2007 creative briefing changed some sentences and we set of to work. First of al our target group is children between 4-12 years old, but the design should first appeal to the parents (especially the mothers) and then to children. Research I have read shows that most of the time mothers make the decision to go to museum with her children. Furthermore the design should have a child in it having fun. The theme of this year’s summer event was the Peruvian Sun Festival (Inti Raymi). The Inti Raymi (”Festival of the Sun”) was a religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the god Inti. The activities for children contain workshops making an Inca crown or pendant, a special quest, sitting on the Inca thrown and singing along with an Inca song.

The producer of this event had made a special deal with a photographer (Hans Hendriksen) whose pictures we could use for this event. So we started to look in his collection to sort out a special picture for the outdoor design. There were several pictures of children but we found it hard to make a choice. Which picture has the most emotional appeal? Which picture shows that this event is fun for the children?

From the three pictures we chose the child with the lama. The designing process went through several stages. Below you will find a design halfway through the process and the final design.

There are three big differences. First of all the symbols were removed to make the design more calm/simple. Secondly we changed the placing and size of characters. Finally we took out the Llama. The reason was that people maybe could expect to see (stuffed) animals at the Sun Festival. But I am still in doubt if it was a good choice.

How does the end result hold up against my outdoor advertising criteria in my previous post. I will rate on a scale of 1 to 5. Where 5 means “this is how it is mend to be” and a rating of 1 you get for the effort.

1.Is the message clear? There is a sunny Peruvian activity in the Tropenmuseum. If I would have to rate I would give it: 4 out of 5.
2.The bike test. I made some pictures (below) to show if it passed the bike test. The characters are fairly good to read, the logo of the Tropenmuseum is a bit small/vague. But I think it is ok. Rating 3 out of 5 stars.
3.Does it appeal to target group? I only can say that a lot of children with their parents are visiting our museum. So probably yes. Rating 4 out of 5.
4.Does it look nice? I think it looks very sunny and joyful. Rating 4 out of 5.
5.Does the message match the content? No not really. While running this campaign we found out that some people thought it was an exhibition. So the message does not match the content. Rating 2 out of 5.

I am totally aware that I am rating our own campaign. But I try to be as honest as possible about our own efforts. And if you have an other opinion you can always comment.

Here in Amsterdam most Cultural institutions (theaters, museums, etc) advertise there special events via outdoor advertising. Outdoor advertising means hanging a fairly large poster in the streets. At the Tropenmuseum when designing our main advertising image of the exhibition we focus most of the time on outdoor advertising. All the other advertising designs are a derivative of the outdoor advertising. Why the focus on outdoor advertising? When we asked our visitors how they got the idea to visit our museum the number one answer for paid communication was outdoor advertising. This could of course be a self fulfilling prophecy. When working with a small budget you don’t have a lot of money to diversify your advertising strategy. So when you always do outdoor advertising the obvious answer that you will get from your visitors when researching advertising effectiveness will be… Outdoor advertising. But this is not the case. As far as my research and our different advertising experiments shows, outdoor advertising is still one of the most effective. Why is outdoor advertising so effective?

I think the first reason is that because a lot of cultural institutions use outdoor advertising, cultural interested people are more attentive for outdoor advertising. They know that when a poster pops up along there traveling route they should take more interest. Secondly people often travel the same routes in a city (f.e. route to work) so people see the poster several times a week. Third, it is harder to skip then for example a television advertisement. Fourth, IF (and that is a big if) you have a good design it gives you a chance to really stand out. But even in outdoor there are so much possibilities varying in size, place and money that a lot of money can be easily wasted.

Because I am so involved in developing outdoor advertising campaigns I personally have some criteria that I use to check if we are on the right way. Or to check what I think of other outdoor designs.

1. Is the message clear or is the message easy to understand? As a rule of thumb they say you should not use more then seven words to get your message across.
2. The Bike test. In Amsterdam everyone travels by bike. And the pace of people riding their bikes is very high. So when passing by does the design stand out. People don’t notice there surroundings very well except if there is something appealing, strange, frightening, sexy or fun that distracts them. And when they decided to watch the advertisement they only do it for two or three seconds on average.
3. What is the target group? And does it appeal to them?
4. Does it look nice? Yes that is the most subjective, but that’s also a matter of experience. I don’t only look at our own designs but also at the designs of other museums. And the more you see the better your esthetical knowledge develops. (or you can just use this ‘expert’ argument to convince others of your great insight)
5. Does the message match the content? Don’t advertise with the biggest and most beautiful gold collection in the world while there is only one showcase in the museum.

But do we always make good outdoor advertising here at my work? No probably not. The outdoor design is made with a team of people who all have their opinions. And a lot of opinions leads to compromise. Most graphical designer have a ‘I know best’ mentality. Then there is the occasional curator, our printing coordinator, my boss, his boss, and the list goes on and on. Then there is the time constraint en budget constraint. Most of the time we keep on changing the designs until last moment but there is a deadline and then it has to be printed. Not every exhibition has a big advertising budget so we just keep it simple.

In this post I just want to show one example we have made for this summer ‘Zonnefeest’ (Sun festival). Next time I will share our design process and the choices we made to come to this result.

For further references:

Some Guidelines
For inspiration

And maybe:
Some research (it is from the outdoor advertising association so there research probably will show that it is good to do)