Museum Strategy

Sponsorship Debate: Venice's "The Bridge of Sisley"

After quite a bit of social media in museums coverage on the blog lately after the recent Communicating the Museum conference, today we are turning our attention to cultural sponsorship and partnerships.

Corinne Estrada, founder and director of Agenda, was recently in Venice and took some interesting photos of the Doge’s Palace and the Bridge of Sighs. They are not your average tourist photos though, as large parts of the sights are currently covered by enormous Sisley billboards advertising their latest collections. These type of billboards are becoming more and more common in European capitals; recently an enormous H&M advertising campaign adorned one entire side of the Palais de Justice in Paris and a Veolia campaign has covered a prominent tower in Prague for several months now.

This is a type of cultural sponsorship where companies pay for this priviledged visibility and the money goes towards renovating these important cultural monuments, many of which need expensive and vital repair work. The projects are always controversial; tourists do not expect to visit a renowned monument such as the Bridge of Sighs and instead be confronted with a thirty foot model adorning every available surface. Just take a look at a couple of quotes I found on some online forums:

>> “I hate this company for the offensive advertising in venice on doges palace. i decided never to buy products of this company. signed, angry customer”

>> “If you think those ads look dreadful during the day, you should see them lit up after dark - absolutely heart-breaking.”

>> “It would be more heartbreaking to see the buildings crumble.”

While some rage against these kinds of adverts, The Art Newspaper recently recommended a huge billboard for the Wladimir Klitschko Curator exhibition on the facade of the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice as the "best advertisement of the entire Venice Biennale". Nicole Newman who is Head of Development at Somerset House (and President of the upcoming CultureBusiness forum) was impressed by the Sisley campaign and Michelle Wright, Head of Arts at London-based PR firm Four Communications thought it was “great”.

We’re going to have an on-going poll in the right-hand column of the blog to see what you all think about this issue, feel free to cast your vote! The Sisley advertising campaign in Venice: an unwanted eyesore which is ruining the city’s cultural beauty? Or a clever sponsorhip project which can facilitate much-needed renovations? Is it polluting the landscape? Or is it an inspired method of communicating a brand's message? This will hopefully form the basis for a debate we conduct at the CultureBusiness forum in Paris in December. So, over to you! We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Top Twittering Institutions

For your inspiration: a sample of cultural institutions using Twitter in different ways...

The Natural History Whale - @NatHistoryWhale – 10,855 followers

New York’s Natural History Museum twitters via the life-size blue whale on its ceiling. It’s a great approach; the whale gives information about exhibitions but also makes funny remarks about visitors below and the existential trials of being a whale stuck on a ceiling. He also provides links to poems he has written and whale-related news stories. An amazing balance of information and whale-style wit. 

"Everyone’s talking about how it’s snowing outside. Hello? Why isn’t anyone talking about the 21,000-pound whale in the room? 10:37 AM Feb 18th from web"

Maryland Zoo - @marylandzoo – 1,074 followers

Maryland Zoo’s Twitterfeed is everything a Twitterfeed should be – informative, funny and not just a series of posts about exhibition times which, let’s face it, are easily the lowest common denominator of Twitter post. Exhibition info is interspersed with bite-sized information about the zoo’s many species of animal with links to further information and the feed is updated several times a day.

"Rock hyraxes look like oversized guinea pigs but actually are most closely related to elephants! http://ow.ly/qQz 7:35 AM Mar 28th from HootSuite"

Brooklyn Museum - @brooklynmuseum – 21,650 followers

Widely regarded as one of the best museums using social media today, Brooklyn Museum is also one of the first institutions to monetize their Twitterfeed. @BrooklynMuseum provides a dynamic feed with exhibition info and constant dialogue between the museum and its followers. However, for a paltry sum of $20 a year, visitors gain access to an exclusive feed called @1stfans where they can talk directly to artists and get invitations to special events. The mastermind behind this scheme, Shelley Bernstein will be speaking at Communicating the Museum. It’s definitely going to be a highlight. 

"Lovely visitor response on the last day of The Black List Project http://bit.ly/2nDnxf (love that this was the last video recorded) 2:23 PM Mar 29^th from Tweetdeck"

The Imperial War Museum - @IMWF – 48 followers

The Imperial War Museum is comparatively new to Twitter but in a month it has already found a way to communicate something interesting to its followers with regular “On this day in...” posts. A simple but effective way to give a Twitterfeed another dimension beyond institutional information.  

"On this day in... 1943: assassination attempt made on Hitler in Smolensk, Russia 6:53 AM Mar 13^thfrom web"

The New Museum - @the_new_museum – 229 followers

The New Museum is a museum currently being built on Liverpool’s waterfront, due for opening in 2010. The museum twitters from the perspective of the actual building, which discusses its new roof, the view from its new windows etc. Hearing the thoughts of a building is a strange existential experience at first but then becomes quite entertaining. The New Museum shows that Twitter needn’t include any exhibition info at all and will still appeal to followers who feel involved in the museum’s ongoing development.

"I love a good sunset. Here's some new pics of me enjoying one on Friday - with the obligatory seagull of course! http://twurl.nl/vz74dz 1:36 AM Mar 24th from web"

NB. We enjoyed this yesterday (Apr 1st)... Britain's The Guardian announced that it would be the only newspaper in the world to transmit news solely via Twitter. You can read all about it here. (And be sure to read the comments at the bottom.)

MUSEUM BRANDING: “A new age for museums : not cathedrals but bazaars”

This week Agenda published the results of a branding survey conducted by Robert Jones, Head of New Thinking at Wolff Olins, during the Communicating the Museum conference held in Venice in June 2008. A few months after Robert leapt into the cultural psyche of the event’s 274 participants, the report still proves fascinating reading for anyone looking for an insight into the current mindset of museum professionals with regards to branding. The full 9-page report can be read in full here but we just wanted to pick out a few of Robert’s most interesting findings here on the blog.

First, a considerable number of museum professionals underestimate the power and scope of branding. 65% of conference participants said that their brand merely “determines the look of stationary, signs and leaflets.” Only  23% claimed that it “guides our exhibition programme.” What’s more, museum professionals don’t seem to like the idea of branding all that much. 23% of participants agreed that brand is “a dirty word – too commercial,” happy to leave it to the marketing department. Robert’s report has a very interesting take on what branding should be – and it’s anything but dirty.

The strongest point throughout Robert’s report is that branding is a vision of a museum’s personality and purpose long before it is a logo. Internally, it is an essential tool in helping employees to adhere to the direction or philosophy of their institution; as Robert puts it “brand is a contemporary tool for management. By asserting what a museum stands for, it suggests what it should and shouldn’t do.” Most conference participants had not yet embraced this side of branding. Just 17% agreed that branding “guides how our staff behave”. 

And the report touches on what will be one of this blog’s most current themes; the fact that museums are a-changing. The gradual migration of both museums and visitors into the buzzing hyper-connected universe of Web 2.0 means that the relationship between museum and visitor is ever more dynamic. Branding is key in facilitating museums’ mutation from teaching institutions into cultural platforms for discussion and sharing. Take the Tate as an example. Its branding is an invitation to “look again, think again,” an invitation which is equally applicable in a museum or in the online community and transforms the museum into a participatory platform.

Interestingly, the report shows that it is museums in the Asia Pacific region and the US which are most keen to harness this new connectivity. Just looking at the number of blogs in Australia and the States dealing with this subject in comparison to those in Europe would seem to confirm this trend.

Anyway, we heartily advise you to go and check out the report itself. We can’t really do justice to all 8 pages here and they are all certainly worth a read.

Picture: Adactio (Some rights reserved)