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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)

In the museum I work every week or so we discuss the relevance of our existence as a museum. This discussion takes mostly place at the lunch table, a the coffee dispenser, staff meetings or sometimes in a more broader academic setting like a conference. In my personal opinion it is always good to discuss why we do what we do. We often conclude that our core business is exhibition making, next to conserving objects and academical research. But lately I have my doubts about the conclusion that exhibition making should be our core business. Why choose to make an exhibition and not make a book, or a documentary, or a website ore use any other relevant medium to cover about the same topic as the exhibit? Or even better use all those media or a combination of media to cover a subject?

Actually it comes down on your mission (statement) as a museum. If these leaves any room for interpretation (in my experience it always does) it is only a matter of choice if you want to go cross medium or just stick to one medium (the exhibit).

What could be the arguments to use several media? Every medium has a certain advantage in telling a story. They engage different senses and are bound in place and time in different ways. For example the sensory experience of an exhibit is quit different then a book. While visiting an exhibit your body is in motion, there are lot of showcases to choose from and to experience the exhibit your are bound to premises of the museum. The sensory experience of book is mainly visual, it is more or less logical organized and is bound to how much weight you can carry.

All the different media can enhance each other. Not everyone can visit an exhibition physically, but they can see it on in the internet or read about in a book. On a website you can show extra things where there is no room for in the exhibit. You can let visitors interact with each other and share their thoughts about a topic. There are more examples then I can think off.

At the Tropenmuseum we have used different media for the same topic. Our famous children’s museum (Tropenmuseum Junior/Kindermuseum) has at the moment an exhibition called ‘Bombay Star’. In this exhibition children experience the city of Bombay India and the people who live there. But next to the exhibition there is also a book to read in the class or at home, a website where you can get extra information but also see a movie of yourself after your visit, a traveling theatrical performance for children who are not able to come to Amsterdam and a documentary series.

But wait a minute I hear all the concerned curators say: ‘How about that great collection?’ Most of the art collection has the intention to be experienced physically. I have to say I agree with the curators a bit. The choice of an exhibition as medium depends on the collection on display and money. But I do think that the main theme of most the exhibitions can be told in many ways and with a lot of other media. So when considering to build an exhibition, consider first all other possible media and use those media in way that they enhance the overall story you would like to tell as a museum.

In the Netherlands and Amsterdam we have two collective museum cards. The first is the so called ‘museumkaart’ or museumcard. This card gives you free entrance, for a year, to about 400 museums in the netherlands after you paid a subscription fee of about 35 euros. This card is handed out by the museumvereniging (The Netherlands Museums Association). It is bought by people who live in the Netherlands. The other card the Iamsterdam card gives you about 1/2/3 days entrance to public transport and museums in amsterdam for 33/43/53 euros. This card is handed out by the tourist board of Amsterdam. This card is mainly bought by tourists.

The advantages for the user of these cards are clear. You pay a fee and you get access for a certain amount of time. There are no hidden costs and off course you minimize risk. If you think the Rijksmuseum sucks you hop out and move to the van Gogh museum. It sounds really good but on the revenue side of things i am not sure if it is all that good.

To participate in these two cards the museum has to sell their admission at a discount to the card distributors. The museums get paid (at the discounted rate) by the card distributors every time the cards pass the cashier. Selling your admission with a discount will cost revenue. But because of the risk free nature of the cards attendance will grow. So will the rise in attendance offset the the losses by selling at a discount? I think in certain cases it will but in some cases it will not. My hypothesis is that Tourist cards will give you more revenue but collaborative cards you sell to locals will cost you revenue.

Let me explain: local people who buy such a card are far better informed about what a museum has to offer then tourists. In the research I have done at the Tropenmuseum when the visitors were askes how they got the idea to visit an exhibition of the Tropenmuseum, about 40% said the heard it from friends and 35% said the read an article in a newspaper. And a lot of them are returning visitors so they know the museum by past experiences. These sources of information minimize the risk of visiting a museum and being disappointed about it. So when a local pays admission, he/she has less chance to be disillusioned. This being said a local would be more willing to pay full admission because he knows more or less what to expect.

The main sources of information of tourists are travel guides, internet, and the guide that comes with the museum pass. These are less reliable sources of information then friends, local newspapers and past experiences. The risk of getting into an unknown local museum is higher. A card like the Iamsterdamcard offsets that risk.

So if the Amsterdam museums would love to have more revenues on admissions. They should collaborative stop accepting the museumcard ‘museumkaart’ and keep accepting the touristcard ‘Iamsterdam card’.