Marketing and Public Relations for Museums, Galleries, Cultural and Heritage Attractions

Ylva French, Sue Runyard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136702310
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Visitors to museums, galleries, heritage sites and other not for profit attractions receive their information in changing ways. Communications channels are shifting and developing all the time, presenting new challenges to cultural PR and Marketing teams. Marketing and Public Relations for Museums, Galleries, Cultural and Heritage Attractions, as well as providing some of the theory of marketing, provides the latest available case studies coupled with comments and advice from professionals inside and outside the cultural sector to describe the possibilities and outline strategies for the future.

A strong theme of change runs through each chapter. The economic climate is already affecting the publicly funded sectors and business and private sponsorship. How will it change over the next few years? The print media is contracting; reading and viewing patterns are changing as online and mobile media grow. What are the trends here, in Europe, US and elsewhere? Sustainability and global warming are not just buzz words but will have a real impact on public and private institutions and their visitor patterns. Population patterns are also changing with new immigrants arriving and the proportion of over 60s increases in Western countries. Cultural tourism has enjoyed a great surge in popularity and huge investments are being made in museums, galleries and events. Marketing and PR play a crucial role in the success of such ventures and will be illustrated with case studies from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Middle East and China.

Marketing and Public Relations for Museums, Galleries, Cultural and Heritage Attractions is aimed at students of marketing, museums, culture and heritage as well as professionals working in a range of cultural organisations from small to large and at different stages of market development from new entrants to those offering mature products. This includes museums, galleries, heritage and visitor attractions, community organisations, as well as organisers of festivals, markets, craft fairs and temporary exhibitions.

PART 1 MARKETING AND PR PRINCIPLES FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813751-1

CHAPTER 1 MARKETING IN A NEW DIMENSION

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813751-2

• An introduction to marketing
• Marketing and its history
• Marketing in the new dimension
• Cultural organisations in the digital age
• Museums and the brand promise
• The marketing process
• Organisation

AN INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING

Having a great idea is only the start of a journey, executing it is as big a challenge and then capitalising upon it in marketing and PR terms is essential and may seem easy. It rarely is. A clearly thought-through plan encompassing branding, timetable and manpower is essential for success.

(Penelope, Viscountess Cobham, Chairman, VisitEngland and the Museum Prize Trust)

The role of marketing in museums, galleries and other not-for-profit cultural organisations is no longer an ad hoc activity but a discipline central to the organisation’s functions both in terms of developing ‘the product’, i.e. what it has to offer and in terms of ‘sales’ – promoting and making accessible its displays, collections and services to the public.

With the inevitable decline of public sector funding, museums and galleries need effective marketing and PR now more than ever before. Getting the message across both to members of the public and opinion formers is vital to ensure the future health of these institutions. If the study and care of collections are at the heart of museum practice, communicating the value of those pursuits has to be embedded in the museum as well.

(Loyd Grossman, OBE, FSA, President, British Association of Friends of Museums)

Cultural institutions have come a long way from a time when they were led mainly by specialists producing events and exhibitions based primarily on their own collections and curatorial interests, to the twenty-first century – responding to the consumer-led society, aiming to provide more of what visitors may want as well as challenging established ideas and tastes, and breaking new ground in terms of contents and interpretation.

From here it is a short step to the interactive, value-added, personalised experiences that today’s visitors increasingly demand. Museums and heritage attractions around the world are also conscious of the need to raise additional income from commercial activities as public funding and subsidies have been reduced. This trend has accelerated in the aftermath of the 2008 credit crunch. As a result of this new consumerled approach and increased commercialism, museums and galleries have been accused of ‘dumbing down’. They are mounting exhibitions on popular subjects – from Grace Kelly’s and Madonna’s dresses to James Bond and Star Trek. They stock their shops with branded merchandise and serve cappuccinos in elegant cafés in order to attract visitors with greater disposable income.

At the same time, a commitment to audience development has emerged in response to influences and public funders. No longer can museums and galleries justify their existence by catering to a narrow, well-educated audience – the traditional museum- visitor. The last twenty years has seen a transformation in audiences in many countries, thanks partly to the more populist approach and partly to the application of audience development and niche marketing. Free entry to the UK’s national museums and galleries has undoubtedly played a part in transforming the profile of visitors. (There will be more on charging later on.) But other countries which charge for entry have also experienced a surge in visitor numbers. Museums and the arts are popular!

Stunning architecture has provided a new, dynamic dimension to museums and galleries. The building itself has become an exhibit; it started with the iconic Guggenheim in New York (Frank Lloyd Wright 1959) but the opening of the striking Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Frank Gehry 1997) marked a new era in creating outstanding architecture for cultural buildings as well as using culture to regenerate the local economy through tourism. In countries where new museums are opening on a significant scale, the architecture is now almost more important than the content. The 2010 shortlist for the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize featured three museums: the revamped Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the transformed Neues Museum, Berlin; and Rome’s brand new MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, designed by Zaha Hadid and ultimately the winner. The challenge for so-called ‘parachute’ museums anywhere is to make them relevant to local people and not just national status symbols designed to attract international tourists, or outposts of American or European cultural institutions.

Figure 1.1MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art (Architect: Zaha Hadid; Photo: Helene Binet)

In the spirit of populism – and the need for revenues to sustain ongoing restoration – historic houses and heritage sites have also transformed themselves to widen their appeal; this applies equally to the stunning rise of the privately owned Alnwick Castle, or any of the 350 historic houses, gardens and ancient monuments for which the National Trust – a membership organisation – is responsible. There is a heavy price to pay for enthusiastic cultural tourists exploring ancient sites and cathedrals when this is not matched by care and conservation, as the Italian authorities have discovered at Pompeii.

This chapter will set out how the basic principles of marketing developed in the commercial sector and how they were adopted and developed in the not-for-profit sector.

Early on in my time at the Museums Association, the theme of one of the conferences was ‘Backing into the Limelight’ reflecting the reluctance and diffidence that museums displayed in speaking up for themselves. It is very different now. A wide range of disciplines is part of the armoury of the modern museum professional and there is an acceptance that marketing and PR in all their forms are essential rather than desirable. Much of what the Museums Association does is on a national scale but our recent Love Museums campaign and this book underline that the best and most effective work is done on the ground. There are no better advocates for a museum than those who know it best.

(Mark Taylor, Director, Museums Association)

MARKETING AND ITS HISTORY

As marketing developed in the nineteenth century in response to industrialisation and large-scale manufacturing it was mostly about sales. Earlier producers and retailers had been mainly involved in supplying their local markets but now they looked further afield. The development of printing enabled pioneers to introduce some of the techniques still popular today, including brand names and prominent messages, displaying these on billboards and posters, and through advertising in newspapers and magazines. 1788 had marked the launch of The Times newspaper (then the Universal Register) in the UK, following in the footsteps of earlier newsletters and publications. Although there were more than 300 newspapers published in the United States in the early nineteenth century, they had tiny circulations. It was the arrival of high-speed printing presses which created a mass market for newspapers. By the 1890s, the first circulation figures of over one million readers for one title were recorded in the United States. (Source: Frank Mott; Newspaper Society – see Resources).

Many more titles followed, and with the invention of the electric telegraph, the era of press agencies dawned. In the United States, Associated Press was formed in 1846 by a group of newspapers sharing the cost of covering the Mexican wars. Paul Julius Reuter realised the importance of the telegraph, and inspired by the laying of the first undersea telegraph cable between Britain and France in 1851 and the subsequent trans-Atlantic cable, he seized the opportunity and founded what was to become the Reuter’s Telegram Company in 1865. The Press Association followed in 1868. The first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable made the communication of news between continents possible within hours, rather than days or weeks. The world continued to shrink as telegraphic cables linked continents and made fast news coverage of two world wars a reality. The next dramatic development in world communications was the satellite. The first was Sputnik, launched by the Russians in 1957, followed by the American Telstar five years later. Britain’s first satellite communications dish was installed at Goonhilly in Cornwall in 1962. (Source: Connected Earth – see Resources).

The accurate measurement of readership of the printed media, vital to the advertising industry, started with the foundation of the Audit Bureau of Circulation in the UK in 1931. The monitoring of television viewers followed as the medium took off after the Second World War, although no wholly satisfactory system for accurately measuring television viewing has yet been devised. Traditionally, television viewing has been measured through diaries kept by a random sample of the public. Meters have also been used but are expensive to install. Nielsen Media Research (US) is working on a system which will combine measurement of television broadcast and internet use. In addition, a Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement has been set up by major advertisers and broadcasters in the United States to promote new techniques for measuring audiences including online, launching the UK system, TouchPoints, in the US. Here is a sample of what is now available:

In 2009/10, people in the UK watched 3.7 hours of television per day, listened to the radio for 2.1 hours, and accessed the internet for 1.8 hours a day. Internet use has increased by 38% in two years. 37% of adults use social network each week. Of the time they spend communicating, adults spend 75% talking or chatting face-to-face. This percentage share has fallen from 77% in 2008 and 81% in 2006. The share spent on the phone – landline or mobile – has stayed relatively constant at 11%, whilst SMS texting and picture messaging has grown to a 4% share; for 15–24 year olds this figure is now 9% and growing.

(TouchPoints – see Resources)

This range of communications media inspired manufacturers to use a growing range of sales techniques developed by marketing professionals. After the Second World War, marketing became synonymous with advertising, as the recently produced American television series Mad Men illustrates. It is set in a New York advertising agency in the 1950s and 1960s and conveys the excitement and creativity of a new industry targeting an increasingly sophisticated consumer, and gradually recognising that many of the buying decisions were now being made by women.

The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising in London’s Notting Hill brings this history of consumer culture to life through household products and shopping- basket favourites in a nostalgic journey from Victorian times to the present day. (Kansas City is opening a Museum of Advertising Icons in 2011.)

Post-war development of marketing was also influenced by the developing science of psychology. The simple process of supply and demand took on a new dimension as advertising agencies and marketers delved into the mind and motivation of the consumer. This was the beginning of consumer-focused marketing which still dominates today, based on increasingly sophisticated market research, including focus groups and other probing techniques. In his revealing study of advertising, The Hidden Persuaders, first published in 1957, Vance Packard questioned the morality of using motivational research and subliminal messages. But the new techniques were widely adopted and are still used today.

Marketing as a separate discipline had been first recognised in the UK in 1911 when the Sales Managers’ Association was founded to improve sales techniques. This later became the UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing. In 1976 the Institute confirmed its definition of marketing, still valid today:

The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

(Chartered Institute of Marketing)

The American Marketing Association, founded in1937, developed from the Association of Teachers in Advertising, which started in 1915. AMA published the first Journal of Marketing in 1936. Its definition of marketing was revised in 2007 and is as follows:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that h...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Quotes from leaders of the sector
• Acknowledgements
• List of Case studies
• List of Figures
• PART 1 MARKETING AND PR PRINCIPLES FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
• PART 2 FROM THEORY INTO PRACTICE
• PART 3 RESEARCH AND RESOURCES
• Index