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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

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.

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.

Since I am working as a museum marketeer I always wonder why do people visit a museum? Why do people desire to go to a building and view different kind of objects? I don’t claim to have the total and complete answer to this question but I will try to shed a light on the motives and desires of museum visitors.

In one of my other posts I discussed what factors a Museum should consider to get the most revenues out of their entrance fees/admissions. This post about pricing policy is viewed from the supply side of the museum. But where there is supply there is also a demand. So what determines the demand for museums?(in random order)

1. The cost of visiting a museum, this contains

• Entrance fee
• Opportunity cost of time: when you have high income time is expensive. The time you are visiting a museum you could have worked and earned a lot more money. With a lower income time is less expensive.
• The price of alternative leisure activities
• Other costs of visiting like transport costs, parking costs.

2. Level of education/intelligence; the average level of education is generally higher in Art Museum, this level drops with History museums, and Science museums have the broadest appeal.

3. Contents of the exhibition (art matters). I have also written a post about that. But what a museum has on display matters for the demand.

4. The design of the building. Maybe not a major factor in considering the demand.

5. The provision of services like catering, museum shop, customer friendliness, hygiene.

6. Marketing & Communication efforts.

7. Satisfying visits in the past

But this list doesn’t really cut it for me. If the Mona Lisa was displayed in a barn, with unfriendly staff, for 30 dollars and little communication would people stay away? Some will but a lot will still want to see the real thing. It is a good list to consider when trying to make an estimate of the demand for museums. Or to optimize your marketing organization. But this list is more or less an observation of the behavior of the museum visitor.

I want try too look inside the head of the museum visitor…What drives him, why is his desire big enough to get out of his chair and wonder around objects of art. In a great book I have read ‘on desire‘ by William B. Irvine, he points out there are instrumental desires and hedonic desires. An instrumental desire is a desire someone fulfills to get to a hedonic desire. For example I want to drive my car to the Louvre to see the Mona lisa. The ‘driving of my car’ is an instrumental desire to get to my hedonic desire ’seeing the Mona Lisa’. Mr. Irvine states that Instrumental desires are desired for the sake of something else. Hedonic desires are desired because I want to feel good or avoid feeling bad. So people visit a museum to feel good or avoid feeling bad.

What kind of psychological factors can trigger this feelings of good or avoiding bad. I have a theory about that. I distinguish two type of feelings: Personal museum feelings and Social museum feelings. Personal museum feelings are feelings you can experience without other people. To experience ‘Social museum feelings’ other people have to be involved. The museum visitor has a hedonic desire to experience at least a part of these feelings.

There are various different personal museum feelings:

• Entertainment feelings, being entertained feels good, you feel joy and fun.
• Educational feelings, understanding how things work, solving a puzzle, raises your self esteem.
• Aesthetical feelings, the awe of seeing a great object of art, is uplifting, it stretches the imagination, it crosses a mental boundary. A colleague of mine said that Great arts gives him consolation. The beauty of the artwork makes live worth living despite all the troubles there are in the world.

There are also various social museum feelings:

• Sharing feelings, Sharing the personal museum feelings with each other. A shared feeling deepens the experience of the feeling. Seeing the same beautiful work of art, and sharing that feeling enhances the aesthetical feelings.
• Superior feelings, visiting a museum to impress people or feeling superior towards other people. Someone who has these kind of feelings may think “hmmmm, what a great painting of Willem de Kooning in his late period, I like it but my stupid friends probably won’t appreciate it”.
• Inferior feelings, you go because your friends visited that exhibition and if you don’t go you can not join in the conversation.
• Lethargic feelings, others decide for you to go, like in a school trip.
• Landmark feelings, you must have seen ‘the venus de Milo‘ en the ‘Mona Lisa’ when you visit the Louvre in Paris or “this exhibition is a once in a life time event”.

What is the marketing use off all those feelings described above? Actually I use the three “personal museum feelings” in my communication strategy. Must we sell the exhibition like an aesthetical one or a more entertaining one. The social museum feelings are more difficult. This is because not all of them are positive feelings. But promoting the an exhibition as a ‘once in a lifetime event’ helps raising attendance or promoting a visit to the museum as shared experience probably also lifts up the image of the museum.