I have been shocked by the secular frankness of certain professors and guest lecturers here at UCL. Being an optimist who believes that people are generally honest and well-intentioned, I have enjoyed this openness, as I have throughout my educational background (check future blog for more on this). Thus, I was happily stunned by the definition given by our guest lecturer late last week. He defined “Market Research” as being “about influencing people’s habits to make them do something repeatedly”. I am familiar with this concept, just not the bluntness of it. This post contains some of the ideas he presented to help people visit, support, and fund museums.
How do you get someone to come to your museum, much less give their money to it, when the general public views museums as fundamentally “educational”? I love education, but I am not an ostrich. I realize that most people don’t view it as something “fun” to do on a night out. Further, museums are seen as being part of the “establishment” or as being “worthy” similar to the way they would see a church. Again, people don’t consider church as something to do when you want to let your “hair down”. This makes marketing museums difficult.
Personally, I love education and I love church (I think the general public has false notions of both) but perception is more valuable to this study than realism because that is what drives people. An example was given to us in class that I think can also be done here. What is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word, “Mars”? I had a picture immediately. The lecturer then asked us to raise our hands when our picture was mentioned. He first said, “god of war” and no hands went up. Then he said, “planet” and most hands went up. Finally he said, “chocolate bar” and the rest of us raised our hands. The question is why? And the answer is Marketing. We are conditioned to think of certain things based on our exposure to them. All of the answers were correct. But if you want people to visit your museum, you must get people to think about museums in a different way then they currently perceive them as.
A few general observations at this point might be useful. Museums are a product that has to be experienced. A person must physically travel to it to experience it. It must be experienced in a particular environment. And thus, location is very important.
The most important thing is to realize that museums are “Asset-led”, meaning, that they cannot change their product, just how it is presented. Thus, it is important to know what people you are targeting want. You can’t change the assets, but you can change the message and presentation to fit this “want”. You can go about this in one of two ways. You can do research to discover what people want or you can condition the public to want what you have.
Either way you will play up your strengths and down play your weaknesses. You will stress what makes you different from other museums or even other forms of recreation. You will “sell” the public on why they should take time out of their day to come visit you. You must convince them why it is in their best interest to do this and even why it is vital that they come. This is fundamentally about attitude in presentation and information put out. You must discover or create a need (most likely one the public doesn’t even know they have) and then fill that need.
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