museummarketing.info

“In the past I have made too many compromises when I made advertisements for the Tropenmuseum”. This is what I was thinking when reading the book “Ogilvy on Advertising“. This book is from 1983 is written by David Ogilvy an advertising guru from the past. For me this book has one main message:

Advertising is selling

While it seems very logical that “advertising is selling”, I was a bit shocked when I comprehended the main theme of this book. In the past years that I have worked at the Tropenmuseum I have seemed to forget that we made advertisements to sell products. For me it seems that I made too much comprises in the past because of esthetical en curatorial objections. Let me explain with two examples. First of all The Tropenmuseum made a campaign with advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in 2007. The purpose of this campaign was to change the image of the Tropenmuseum and to promote a new exhibition called Bisjpoles. The main theme of the campaign was “There is a story behind everything” and the posters made, expressed that slogan literally. Below you see the Bisjpole example, where in front there is a picture of a Bisjpole and behind illustrated is the story of the Bisjpole. In my opinion it is very beautifully crafted by Saatchi & Saatchi en has a very big esthetical appeal. But did it sell?….No it did not.

Saatchi & Saatchi Bisjpole Campaign Poster

The exhibition was highly rated in the press but it just did not seem to get a high attendance. Even in the research we did people said that for the most part they came for the Tropenmuseum in general and not for the Bisjpole exhibition (with special exhibitions this is normally the other way around). I think that the lack of success can be attributed to the incomprehensible campaign we made. The impression that people get of this poster when driving by is mainly green messy soup. The illustration is too detailed to get a fast impression. What makes it worse is that the message is too small to read properly. At the end of the exhibition we ran some small advertisements in the Dutch newspapers. We crafted our own more straight forward advertisements. We made it easy to read and comprehend, we added some positive quotes from those newspapers and we added a sense of urgency “Last Chance” (laatste kans) in a banner across the advertisement. We did not research if this advertisements work. But I do know that we made one of the best months ever in attendance.

Tropenmuseum newspaper ad

Another example is the Vodou campaign, depicted below. The campaign image is ok. Pretty straightforward creepy looking fellows with big characters screaming out “VODOU”. But within the Tropenmuseum we had some discussion about using ‘Vodou’ or ‘Voodoo’. The exhibition is about Haitian Vodou, which is spelled V-O-D-O-U. But everybody in the Netherlands is more familiar with ‘Voodoo’ the way they spell it in Hollywood. We did some research about how people would perceive the word ‘Vodou’ vs ‘Voodoo’. What we found out is that people never heard of the word ‘Vodou’ but still associated it with ‘Voodoo’ in a way. So we choose Vodou because it is way it is supposed to be written and because we thought people would still comprehend it. Looking back now, I should have fought more for the ‘Voodoo’ instead of ‘Vodou’. I think it would have sold the exhibition better…or at least the advertisements would have made faster and bigger impression.

Tropenmuseum Vodou poster

As a museum marketeer you have to compromise. But next time I make an advertising campaign I won’t forget…..that ads are there to sell, not to satisfy the curator.

Yes, I am getting crazier all the time lately. I have quit my job at the Tropenmuseum and I am now sitting at home watching the flowers grow….until I can start with my new job. I will be the head of marketing and sales at the Dolhuys, the national museum of psychiatry. But still did I make the right move? let’s compare the statistics (Tropenmuseum vs Het Dolhuys):

• Visitors a year;  200.000 vs 30.000 (hmmm…lucky me, all those visitors just cramp the museum)
• Budget; 10.000.000 euro’s vs 1.500.000 euro’s (well less money, but we are not poor)
• Power; one of those small mice vs Big vice-Boss (power, I love it)
• Staff; 70 vs 13 (ah, that is why I became vice-boss so easily)
• City; Amsterdam vs Haarlem (Suburbia here we come)
• Mission of Museum; World Culture vs Crazy People (what’s the difference, anyway?)
• Age of the building; 1926 vs 1320 (yes now are talking…that is medieval)
• Volunteers; 0 vs 140 (half of them have a psychiatric background)
• Collection; 240.000 vs a few thousand objects (hmmm, there is some work to do here)

As you can see it is a totally different museum. It is small, different subject…but I think that it is great. People with psychiatric problems often face prejudice. The Dolhuys tries with exhibitions, lectures and special events to take the prejudice away. And make the world a better place is always the reason why I started working in a Museum in the first place. So my posts will contain a mix of past Tropenmuseum experiences and Dolhuys experiences from now on.

Today en Yesterday at the Tropenmuseum we had a big symposium about the role and importance of the Tropenmuseum as an ethnological museums in the 21st century. The discussions were academical and very interesting. The debate was mainly focused on what the exhibitions of the Tropenmuseum are all about, and what it should be about in the future. But in the core the discussion was about the mission of the Tropenmuseum. One thing was very striking to me: nobody dared to ask the question “Is the market waiting for all these exhibition?”, “does the market like the exhibitions as they are now?”.

As a marketeer I think that it was bad that these questions were not addressed (and there was no opportunity for me to ask them myself). But I am also fully aware of the balance a non-profit organization as the Tropenmuseum has to make between market and mission. But which one is right? The market or the mission? To answer that question I want to quote Peter Brinckerhoff, in his book ‘Mission-Based Marketing‘ he states that the answer to this question can be written down in three sentences:

1. The market is always right
2. The market is not always right for you
3. The mission should be your organizations ultimate guide

The consequences of these three sentences are:

1. Don’t get disappointed when nobody is visiting your museum after all the hard work. You probably don’t have a very attractive offering for the public.
2. You can not serve all markets as a museum. And if you want to serve them all you probably would have to compromise one your mission.
3. What you are as an organization is stated in you mission. And all the products and services that you offer should fit into that mission.

So the main conclusion is that the mission and the market are equally important but that your mission is your guiding principle in making product offerings for the market. I want to emphasis that the mission is not a static thing and should be discusses on a regular basis. A very famous example is the Mobile Phone company Nokia which started out as a wood-pulp mill and later on made other products like rubber boots. In the Sixties Nokia changed it’s mission and vision and focused on Telecommunications.

In the end I was happy with discussion that took place. It gave me new insight in the Intellectual discourse of the museum world and it provides valuable input in redefining our mission. It was a bad thing that nobody really mentioned the market in anyway.

PS: Nina Simon of museum 2.0 was also attending the symposium…she said to me several times “I am so involved with making things for the public, I am glad there are people who think about the theoretical site of things’. She inspired me with this remark for this post.

I have not posted in two weeks but I am very busy with the opening of our new exhibition called ‘Vodou, art & mysticism from Haiti’ on the 31st of october. But I can give you a preview of all the advertising materials we made.

Below you see our commercial for the exhibition. It will be broad casted on regional Amsterdam television (AT5) and National Geographic Channel. Cultural/non-profit institutions can get a cultural discount for advertising on these channels. Why these two channels? Well about 70% of our visitors come from the region Amsterdam, and National Geographic channel is one of the most watched among museum visitors (sorry no source for this).

And off course a lot of outdoor advertising in Amsterdam with a special focus on billboards. We choose the billboards due to the nature of the advertising image. It works best in landscape mode. The idea is that the Vodou army is really getting towards you. These billboards work best for people traveling by car.

Some A0 advertising in the city of Amsterdam for people traveling by bike.

And without examples, small advertisements in the big intellectual newspapers of the Netherlands. Some Google adwords, a great website (still being built at the moment),

We burn away most of the advertising budget in the first two weeks of the exhibition. The reason for this is that at that moment there is the a lot of free publicity present. In these two weeks potential visitors will (hopefully) get more then one impression of the exhibition via advertising and free publicity combined. The more impressions, contact moments, a potential visitor gets the higher this exhibition will be on his mental agenda (in other words: be a choice among the exhibitions/leisure activities someone wants to visit/do).

Some advertising budget is left for small reminders half way the exhibition and at the end of the exhibition.