An anecdote: In a recent conversation with a marketing manager at a larger cultural institution in the Netherlands I asked after the organisation’s primary target groups. “That’s not the way we think about marketing here,” was his stern reply.
Another meeting, another story: When discussing how to get people to enjoy a new cultural product a cultural communication professional quickly pointed out that the best way was probably carpet bombing the city with posters and flyers. That’s how they always did it, even though they had no clue about the ROI.
Marketing is all about bringing the right product to the right people. It’s about market research, product development, distribution, sales, public relations and yes: also partly about promotion and advertising. There is no marketing without a market, without an understanding of the market and without a specific focus on a market.
Promotion alone won’t help you get your product to the market. Buying ads doesn’t automatically help you reach the right people. Even if all curators start writing Facebook updates, this doesn’t necessarily get more people through the door. Read the rest of this entry »
Most of the workshops I run I conclude with a simple and effective game I call Bag It or Bin It*. Simply put I ask participants to summarise the main ideas of the workshop and put them into two categories: the ideas they will follow up (these go in the bag) and the ideas they never want to hear about again (these go in the bin). The result is a nicely coloured co-created do’s and dont’s list for the participants.
Minke Havelaar, with whom I run a series of workshops for Mediamatic’s Kom Je Ook?, has made a summary of a couple of Bag It or Bin It games we played about social media marketing strategy with cultural institutions. The result reads like a trend list for social media development in the cultural and non-profit sector. Especially interesting is what people put in their bags regarding the strategic use of social media.
So, what do our colleagues focus on when it comes to social media? Here’s 100s of ideas summarised in six clear trends:
Quantity versus quality of content
Do’s include writing Tweets and Facebook updates according to best practices (short, images, etc.), the 9-1 rule for writing more about others than about yourself and thinking more strategically about each piece of content.
Whenever I feel like there is an occasion for a party, I always quickly reject the idea. I’m terrible at throwing parties. It’s not that I’m not a good cook, don’t know about wine or have trouble keeping a conversation going. It’s not even that I know my musical taste is a bit unusual or have too few friends. My problem with throwing parties is that I know I will never quite invite anybody, or ever publicly announce the event.
This, unfortunately, is a problem lots of people are having when it comes to their digital strategy. We’re great (or at least getting better) at designing engaging online content, yet terrible at reaching people with it.
Earlier this year a theatre company in the Netherlands made a production about making news. For months they researched how to manipulate the news and how to get topics trending. The accompanying website was nicely made, with bonus materials and even an interactive YouTube video. The only problem: nobody knew about the production. They had studied making news, but forgotten to be news themselves, as the people involved had to admit reluctantly in an interview.
There’s a subtle but important different between providing good engaging online content and actually reaching people with it. I call this difference the difference between engagement and outreach and it’s a tough difference if I consider many of the projects I’ve been advising about in the past months. Read the rest of this entry »
Erik Schilp (r) and Valentijn Byvanck (l) present Blueprint to Jan Marijnissen.
This blog was once started to document the (digital) development of a museum of national history in the Netherlands. As most readers will know, that museum never happened. What most readers – acquainted with our very visible projects such as xwashier and the National Vending Machine – might not know is that a large part of the work done by our curators has never been made public. Until now.
Yesterday in a packed Felix Meritis in Amsterdam the publication Blueprintwas presented. The book shows in detail our plans for the design and contents of a museum of national history for the Netherlands. It contains sketches of exhibitions, descriptions of displays and interactives and even ideas for the architecture of the physical building. It is the outcome of years of work by some of the most talented people I’ve ever met and beautifully designed by one of my favourite designers in the Netherlands.
N.B. I should have posted this post when I first wrote it. By now Alain de Botton’s opinion about museums is all over the place, and way better written (that is: by him) so you’d better read his columns on the Huffington Post or the Museums Association website. Sorry!
It’s been a while since we reflected on the way Lady Gaga or Richard Branson would make your museum top the charts. Recently a book came out by the great thinker and museum babes lover Alain de Botton which provides us with another nice angle on the outsider’s view on museums: secularism.
Religion for Atheists by De Botton is a guidebook to religion’s uses in a secular life. For topics such as community, education and forgiveness it looks at the good religions have to offer so we can enrich our secular existence. It’s a beautiful book, one of the most enlightening works I’ve read in a long while. You get a good sense of the book’s contents and energy from De Botton’s powerful TED talk embedded below.
The presentation also gives some insight in this post’s topic: how Alain de Botton would run a museum. “Our museum of art have become our new churches.” he writes. But they aren’t perfect, “While exposing us to objects of genuine importance, they nevertheless seem incapable of adequately linking these to the needs of our souls.”
His museum would be a meeting place for strangers, where all sorts of people are encouraged to learn about each other and talk about important topics. Such a museum would battle one of our secular world’s greatest fears: loneliness. Visiting a museum would be like visiting an agape feast. Read the rest of this entry »
