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In a Dutch newspaper (NRC) there was an article about Philippe de Montebello the departing director off the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). Under his presidency the Met doubled up in exhibiting space end collected a few billion dollars in funds and has huge visitor numbers. The Met has around 5 million visitors a year and is one of the most popular attractions of the city of New York. Mr. Montebello is clearly a successful museum entrepreneur. But I think he would probably really detest the word entrepreneur. In his opinion a museum should not be seen as an economic entity, but first and foremost as place where great works of art can be admired or learned from. In this interview he states “I don’t look at visitor numbers, I don’t care that much. It is awesome if a lot of people attend the museum, but if they don’t, it is their problem’

What do I think about that as museummarketeer? In my opinion a museummarketeer should care about only three things visitor numbers, revenue, and customer satisfaction. Would I be a very unhappy marketing professional if Mr. Montebello was my boss?? My answer is probably not.

Why not? First of all in previous blog posts I have said that ‘art matters’ for getting really high visitor numbers. Mr Montebello has always strived for excellence in the artworks that were on display. Only the best is good enough. I could not agree more as a marketeer. Content matters, Art matters, as a marketeer you are only spreading the word around.

Secondly I could be a marketeer anywhere. I could work in a peanut jelly factory and do exactly the same thing as I do for a museum. But I don’t work at peanut jelly factory I choose to work at a museum (and get less paid). I choose to work in a museum because it gives me a first hand opportunity to learn about, gaze at, experience works of art.

Thirdly, I think art/a museum sells better if it has an elitist image. Great artists are most of the time great salesmen too. Rembrandt was well known about his salesmen qualities and a modern example is Damien Hirst. Selling art is different then selling peanut jelly. Selling art is also selling a story, is selling meaning, is selling something luxiourus. If Mr. Montebello would say that he thinks visitor numbers are more important then the works of art he puts on display he would be a terrible salesperson. He would take away the magic of the museum.

Furthermore I think he is just being a bit provocative. In the discussion about the cultural entrepreneur or the museum as an economic entity he is choosing a clear point of view. I guess that he thinks that the discussion about museums is to much focused on economics and less about the art. If museums would focus solely on economics they would end up being amusement parks. This is probably his worst nightmare (and mine too). But a museum without visitors and uncomprehensible art is in my opinion also not a thing to strive for. Museums should be balanced in their economic/marketing focus and their focus on art. My guess (again) is that Mr. Montbello is fully aware of that, considering his great economic achievements.

As a marketeer I would probably enjoy working with Mr. Montebello. It is a pity he is leaving.

More on Philippe de Montebello in NYTimes.com

As a marketeer I sometimes wonder what is the purpose of a museum? What is the core business of a museum? In my work I am always so focused on selling exhibits that I think that other products and services that are made by my museum are less important. For example a curator has written a new book about ‘Embroidery from Guatemala’. He then asks me to make a press release…..Or the museum has acquired the same embroidery and the collection department is hoping that the press will be all over it. So should I give attention to these events? Or are they in a different category of business next to exhibiting?

To answer this question I start my investigation with the definition of a museum:

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) states on their website:

‘A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.’

PFFF, WOW, what a definition….

When you look carefully you can see that a museum has three main business purposes.

1. Collection, via acquire & conserve
2. Communicate and exhibit
3. Research

I personally think that in a museum organization these three core business should be seen as three different business entities with their own key performance indicators. And I even think that is possible to separate/outsource them.

Let’s start with Collection. The conserving of the collection is not something that has to be done by a museum itself. It would probably a lot cheaper if museums combine their collection in one central storage department with a dedicated staff. A lot of economy of scale can be reached here. Combining the collections would also make it more accessible. There is only one database instead of several which can be used for research purposes.

Exhibiting: lets give some examples: here in the Netherlands we have two famous exhibition halls called ‘de nieuwe kerk‘ and ‘de kunsthal‘. They have a lot of exhibitions on display and are successful with that. But they don’t have any collection of their own. They use external curators to make their exhibition and they use collection of other museums or other organizations.

Finally does a museum have to have their own research department? As seen above exhibition halls can do without. But even if you have a collection of your own, do you really need curators? You need them, but not on a permanent pay list. The Dutch open air museum was almost bankrupt a few years ago and the first thing they did to survive was fire their curatorial department. And the museum flourishes as never before….

I also think that research can be better done at a University then at a Museum. Again you can reach considerable economies of scale but also most universities have clear academic standards on how you must perform as a professor. I sometimes get the feeling that these standards are lacking in a lot of museums.

But next to three core business defined above there is also a fourth. A lot of museums have one major asset: their building. The exploitation of a museum building with shops, for parties, for special events can be a major source of revenue.

And maybe there is even a fifth: merchandising, but you can also say that merchandising is a derivative of exhibiting or collection.

And should I write a press release about the book ‘Embroidery from Guatemala’? Since my job description is a bit fuzzy it is up to me, but if I see myself working for the core business ‘exhibiting’ I can let this work pass.

In one of my previous posts I made a star appeal matrix for creating blockbuster exhibitions. While making this matrix I was contemplating what defines a blockbuster exhibition. With some googleing and some of my own brainpower I found that a blockbuster exhibition has the following characteristics:

Quantitative characteristics in order of importance are:

1. The number of visitors the exhibitions attracts
2. The revenue it generates
3. The public relations value
4. The appreciation of the visitors

All those quantitative characteristics has to be positive deviations of the what the normal/average numbers are. This means that when a museum, with an average of 100.000 visitors a year, has that one special exhibition which attracts 350.000 visitors, this museum has created a Blockbuster. Apart form that a museum should also compare his numbers with other museums.

There are also content related characteristics (in random order):

• The blockbuster exhibition has a popular theme. (sex, sport)
• The content of the exhibition matches the zeitgeist.
• The exhibition has celebrity appeal or some other well known icons. (Picasso, King Tut)
• The exhibition has several content layers: the superficial visitor is being entertained but also the more profound visitor can fulfill his needs.
• It appeals to an international audience.
• One or two clear defined target groups.

And finally there are are also some organizational characteristics:

• Is the museum organization or a PR agency able to create a hype/buzz?
• Can the museum organization create/get enough content?

When your museum wants to create a blockbuster exhibition, you should first look into the content characteristics. Brianstorm with each other and see if your ideas at least partially match those characteristics. Then when the best ideas are chosen look at your organization and see if it is able to pull it off. Finally what defines a blockbuster for a small museum is different then for a big one.

Here are some of the resources I used. Some focus on the negative side of blockbuster exhibition:

• The temple of vrooom
• Are blockbuster exhibitions killing art?
• Blockbuster Shows And Prices to Match
• Blockbuster Exhibitions - Why?

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.

After writing my blog article on star appeal that was finished at 23.39 I went to bed for some good night sleep. Right before my eyes shut down totally I was thinking about my article and saw that I mixed up some things. My conclusion was that not all celebrities are equal in the museum world. There are two possible ways to measure celebrity appeal. The first way is the image of the star: is he well known? Does he have a positive or interesting angle to offer to the exhibition? Is his brand name so well known that this immediately means the exhibition has to be good or interesting? The other way is artistic value. Artistic value means that the artifacts or collection associated with this person are esthetically or historically appealing.

While considering this I came up with a star appeal matrix loosely inspired by the bcg matrix. This star appeal matrix has two axes. The first axis is the strength of the image of the person. The second axis is the artistic value of the artifacts which are linked to that person. As you can see below some of the dots are already filled in. The chart has four quadrants.

- Mice, this is the lower left quadrant. In this quadrant you will find the nobodies or artistic wannabe’s. The have a lack of any artistic or pr value
- Question marks, this is upper left quadrant. In this quadrant you will find artists with high artistic value. They are very good at what they do but are not a household brand. They can probably grow into stars but with bad luck return to mice.
- PR kings, this is the lower right quadrant. In this quadrant you will find artists with a lot of PR/marketing value. The artists are well known brand but lack artistic value for the museum.
- Stars, this is the quadrant in the upper right corner. If you can make an exhibition with objects who are related too, uses by or made by these persons you have a blockbuster exhibition.

No relevant science is used in determining the spot of the persons in this chart. I just made up the numbers to give an example. But I think it is possible to make a chart like this. It could for example be useful in choosing for a certain exhibition. Do you want for example to make an overview of the work of Madonna (the singer) in your museum? It will give you a lot of PR but the risk is your museum will be taken less seriously. Or do you want to show the bright young and upcoming artist who nobody knows. This matrix could probably also be used for themes instead of persons.

Links about the question marks in the chart:
Khosrow Hassanzadeh
Rogerio Reis