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.

• 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.

Here is the top 10 of blockbuster exhibition tips:

10. Make a face book of all the employees. There was so much extra staff needed, that the regular staff had trouble with keeping up with all the new people.

9. Arrange extra workspace. The Drents museum did not have enough desks, computers and telephones for all the extra staff.

8. Make a separate entrance and exit. With long queues you don’t want to get a traffic jam at your entrance.

7. Don’t offer guided tours. They disturb the crowd that is trying to squeeze itself through the exhibition. The Drents Museum offered introductions in separate rooms. After the introduction the groups where on their own.

6. The queues were at their biggest from 11.00-14.00. Persuade people to come early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

5. Arrange for umbrella’s/parasol and/or a cover. Visitor who are standing in a queue and get wet or get a sunburn are bad for your image.

4. Don’t let to much people in. Off course there are limitations set by the Fire department, but even with that limitations the Drents Museum suffered from to much CO2 in the air and heat.

3. Make a separate lines for people who have already bought their ticket and one for who have not bought it.

2. Don’t offer audiotours but give away free text guides. Audio tours have the hassle of  taking them out and taking them in

1. Don’t give people in the queue drinks. They have to pee….

Queue Drents Museum, flickr Arie van Tilborg

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.

At the Tropenmuseum we had a discussion within our marketing staff if we should react in on the hype that is being created. In a previous post I explained that we have our own skull too. Furthermore the new vodou exhibition that opened a week ago contains so many skulls that we have lost count. Responses we considered were:

The list with funny and less funny responses can go on and on. We decided not to pursue any of these responses because it would distract of the main story we were selling last week: our new Vodou exhibition. Also I personally think it is sign of weakness to ride along with someone else’s hype. Responding on the hype Rijksmuseum is creating is a defensive move. And the best defense is offense even in museum communications. The van Gogh museum clearly has another opinion. In the week the exhibition opened at the Rijksmuseum, they responded with the ad below.

It states in Dutch: “Come and see our Skull too”, “The van Gogh Museum, congratulates the Rijksmuseum with their temporary guest for the love of God by Damien Hirst”.

What does the van Gogh Museum want with this ad? Is it Humor? Is it riding a long with the hype? or are they cynical about the hype? Probably all three a bit. The cynical part is in the words “temporary guest”. They could have used the word ‘exhibition’ or just skip the words. I am not going to Analyze it any further. But I would have spend my marketing euro’s on something I want to tell, I don’t want to tell the story of another organization.