Making headlines
John Holt talks to press and PR people about making the most of the fantastic stories that museums and galleries have to tell
The public’s craving for reasonably priced enlightenment and the sector’s devotion to delivering customer satisfaction are keeping museum visitor numbers on the rise.
But the impact of a posse of violent TV heavies, the call of Cockney rhyming slang and the pull of an overstuffed walrus should not be underestimated in the race to stay noticed and relevant.
These are the focus of some of the campaigns, tactics and stunts carried out by the cultural sector’s press and marketing teams to inform existing and potential audiences of what’s on and why they have to see it.
After all, an institution can claim the coolest collections, mount the most exquisite exhibitions and run the widest-ranging research programmes in town but no one will be any the wiser if these activities are not properly promoted.
So here are some insights into the importance of finding a “human” angle amid all that art history stuff, preparing unconvinced curators to face the cameras and establishing brand strategies encompassing everything from display cabinets to cafe menus.
All these headline issues and more come courtesy of museum newsmakers, who each also recount a favourite slice of PR magic.
Andrew Marcus, deputy head of communications, Museum of London
“In PR and marketing, content is vital and in some businesses you spend a lot of your time working out just what it is. In museums, it’s on a silver platter waiting for you.
I’ve worked across many sectors, including retail and trade bodies, and that has given me a sense of how to market to consumers which is, after all, what museum visitors are. The cultural world is sometimes inclined to treat them as a different breed of people – they’re not.
In the past, museums haven’t been particularly market-oriented but visitors are increasingly at the heart of all activity. The Museum of London is just as focused on a strategy that aims to get people through the door as it is on high-quality academic output.
After all, there’s a massive marketplace for days out in London and we’re not just competing against other museums. We want to stand out, so we use a graphic design house that predominantly works in retail, for example, and an agency that concentrates on the theatre world to look after our advertising.
We’re getting better at using all sorts of tactics. Recently, we carried out a survey on Cockney rhyming slang, which provided us with national and global headlines when it revealed that the vernacular was – not to put too fine a point to it – brown bread.”
Catrin Taylor, corporate communications, Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales)
“It’s the job of our PR people to ensure that the public – particularly young families and tourists – know all our museums have something for everyone. At a corporate level, we concentrate on raising the profile and value of the organisation.
We are not museum professionals so we bring a different perspective on what works in terms of messaging. Very often, we won’t initially agree with curators about the sort of things we should be saying.
Currently, we’re trying to help our staff to recognise what might make a good news story and to be more assured about talking to the media. It helps the museum considerably if we have a good base of spokespeople who can communicate clearly and confidently on a wide variety of topics.
Like every other department, our budgets have been reduced in recent years and this has led to a greater focus on PR and the digital domain because they are free.
Social media can be a really positive way of reaching a very wide audience but we have to monitor it continuously to respond to negative stories such as the recent threat of industrial action as we go about our restructuring programme.”
Catharine Braithwaite, Lethal Communications arts marketing consultancy
“Museums tend to ask for my help in attracting national coverage for big exhibitions, new gallery openings or new seasons.
I also work with smaller institutions that rely on local authority press officers who are not experts in this field and tend to have to spend a lot of their time firefighting on behalf of the council rather than endorsing art shows.
I encourage clients to think hard about how an exhibition might appeal to a particular publication or broadcaster rather than sending everything out to everyone.
I recently met the arts and entertainment people at BBC News who said they were not especially interested in a curatorial angle to cultural events. They prefer something that will make a human-interest story and I guess I’m paid to think about those hooks.
Overall, there’s less money around in PR budgets and a by-product of that is I’m also being asked to mentor inexperienced marketing people so museums and galleries can keep the work in-house and cost-effective.
I loved my time working in museums, particularly on the launch of Tate Modern, but when I subsequently received multiple requests to recommend someone to help with national campaigns, I realised there was a gap in the market.”
Hannah Boulton, head of press and marketing, British Museum, London
“The British Museum is in a good position regarding visitor numbers but, alongside all the activities taking place, we like to remind everyone about the permanent collections.
While great numbers of tourists make their way here, we’re constantly recommending British people to come again to see what has changed since the last time they visited.
Overall, museums and galleries have become noticeably better at both welcoming audiences and responding to them. Internally, more museum professionals are taking press and marketing more seriously after recognising the impact we can have.
The job is a great way of working in a museum if you’re not someone who always dreamed of being a curator of Egyptology. You operate across many disciplines, finding ways to bridge the curatorial insight with what the audience requires, and you’re always learning from a variety of people who are experts in their fields.
It is constantly changing thanks to online and social media. It’s not so long ago that we used to post printed material and transparencies to newspapers and magazines but information now needs to be disseminated at frightening speeds.
If we’re doing a press launch here about a new exhibition or discovery, we want to ensure that we are, in effect, publishing the information first through live tweeting and online posting.
But we also know that people still attach importance to information coming from a traditional, trusted source so we always ensure the message also goes out through the print and broadcast media, too.”
Victoria Pinnington, director of communications, Horniman Museum and Gardens, London
“A lot of work has been carried out on our brand identity, our tone of voice, our values and our communications output and we embed marketing activity right at the beginning of every project, from planning new exhibitions or the redisplay of a gallery to fundraising, the products in our shop and the items on our cafe menu.
It’s taken a lot of work to win the hearts and minds of some museum colleagues about the value of all this and we’re not fully there yet but we’re in a healthy place.
However, the Horniman is in something of a cultural cold spot, geographically-speaking, and the majority of our visitors come from three London boroughs so we have positive positioning as a local community museum that happens to have world-class collections.
Our events programme is, therefore, important; we recently hosted an Edwardian dance weekend inspired by our collections and people came dressed up for it.
It’s important that our audience feels comfortable coming here and recent Association of Leading Visitor Attractions benchmarking data shows we’re the highest-rated museum for repeat visits.”
Laura Wakelin, director of communications and marketing, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley
“We’ve deliberately made our marketing material more family-friendly in terms of text and imagery rather than it concentrating purely on the collections and buildings as it has in the past.
Hiring out our open-air site of historic streets and buildings for use by broadcasters and film-makers is a very effective way of promoting ourselves. The BBC’s Peaky Blinders and Dancing on the Edge programmes were part-filmed here and we have a couple of really big dramas in the pipeline.
As well as generating income, it is important that we establish a reputation in the industry so that when programmes go to air we can simultaneously talk about the location via the press and social media.
Some museums like to outsource their PR and marketing to external agencies. This can be advantageous when you have a finite budget and regular events but I think keeping it in-house works better when someone with specialist knowledge about the museum is available to respond quickly to news stories.
The good thing about museum PR is that you can see any differences that you make really quickly, which is very rewarding.”
John Holt is a freelance journalist
Andrew Marcus
“We strongly pushed the glamour element when we launched the Cheapside Hoard exhibition (above), undertaking a lot of work with the high-end fashion press. We had the jewellery editor at Vogue talk about the importance of the hoard. Traditionally, you put a quote from a thought leader in a press release but we filmed her and had upwards of 6,000 views online, which is a big number for a brand such as ours. Google Analytics showed that a very high proportion of the people who watched it subsequently bought a ticket for the exhibition.”
Catharine Braithwaite
“The Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool put on a show comprising old photographs of the seaside selected by a contemporary artist (right, Geoff Buono, South Pier Box Office) and wanted to push the artistic side exclusively but I thought the seaside theme was ripe for the media during an English summer. It attracted massive spreads in the press and the curator was invited on to a BBC Radio 2 arts programme. You don’t have to be in London to get noticed.”
Catrin Taylor
“We recently communicated David Anderson’s [the director general of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, above] views about the inequality of arts coverage and funding through our blog. It was picked up by the press and gathered momentum and we’re now looking at holding a national event on the topic.”
Hannah Boulton
“It was a privilege to have been involved in the British Museum’s role in the aftermath of the looting of the museums in Iraq (above, the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad) in 2003, which helped to highlight a global issue; whenever cultural heritage is at risk, this institution leads the way in raising awkward questions.”
Victoria Pinnington
“It was a bit of a risk letting our iconic overstuffed walrus out of the gallery for the Curiosity exhibition at Margate’s Turner Contemporary and we had to minimise any negative impact his absence might cause. We used social media and user-generated content, asking people to leave messages about how they felt about him.
There’s generally less reliance on print media in what we do these days. Then there was a PR campaign about his departure and film of him being lifted out of the gallery, which was a very specialist operation. He tweeted about his journey and we sold a lot of toy walruses in the museum shop.”
Laura Wakelin
“Recently, the great-grandson of the greengrocer who originally used one of the buildings brought to our site came to visit his family’s old shop (above). It was a lovely story that received some great national coverage.”
But the impact of a posse of violent TV heavies, the call of Cockney rhyming slang and the pull of an overstuffed walrus should not be underestimated in the race to stay noticed and relevant.
These are the focus of some of the campaigns, tactics and stunts carried out by the cultural sector’s press and marketing teams to inform existing and potential audiences of what’s on and why they have to see it.
After all, an institution can claim the coolest collections, mount the most exquisite exhibitions and run the widest-ranging research programmes in town but no one will be any the wiser if these activities are not properly promoted.
So here are some insights into the importance of finding a “human” angle amid all that art history stuff, preparing unconvinced curators to face the cameras and establishing brand strategies encompassing everything from display cabinets to cafe menus.
All these headline issues and more come courtesy of museum newsmakers, who each also recount a favourite slice of PR magic.
Andrew Marcus, deputy head of communications, Museum of London
“In PR and marketing, content is vital and in some businesses you spend a lot of your time working out just what it is. In museums, it’s on a silver platter waiting for you.
I’ve worked across many sectors, including retail and trade bodies, and that has given me a sense of how to market to consumers which is, after all, what museum visitors are. The cultural world is sometimes inclined to treat them as a different breed of people – they’re not.
In the past, museums haven’t been particularly market-oriented but visitors are increasingly at the heart of all activity. The Museum of London is just as focused on a strategy that aims to get people through the door as it is on high-quality academic output.
After all, there’s a massive marketplace for days out in London and we’re not just competing against other museums. We want to stand out, so we use a graphic design house that predominantly works in retail, for example, and an agency that concentrates on the theatre world to look after our advertising.
We’re getting better at using all sorts of tactics. Recently, we carried out a survey on Cockney rhyming slang, which provided us with national and global headlines when it revealed that the vernacular was – not to put too fine a point to it – brown bread.”
Catrin Taylor, corporate communications, Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales)
“It’s the job of our PR people to ensure that the public – particularly young families and tourists – know all our museums have something for everyone. At a corporate level, we concentrate on raising the profile and value of the organisation.
We are not museum professionals so we bring a different perspective on what works in terms of messaging. Very often, we won’t initially agree with curators about the sort of things we should be saying.
Currently, we’re trying to help our staff to recognise what might make a good news story and to be more assured about talking to the media. It helps the museum considerably if we have a good base of spokespeople who can communicate clearly and confidently on a wide variety of topics.
Like every other department, our budgets have been reduced in recent years and this has led to a greater focus on PR and the digital domain because they are free.
Social media can be a really positive way of reaching a very wide audience but we have to monitor it continuously to respond to negative stories such as the recent threat of industrial action as we go about our restructuring programme.”
Catharine Braithwaite, Lethal Communications arts marketing consultancy
“Museums tend to ask for my help in attracting national coverage for big exhibitions, new gallery openings or new seasons.
I also work with smaller institutions that rely on local authority press officers who are not experts in this field and tend to have to spend a lot of their time firefighting on behalf of the council rather than endorsing art shows.
I encourage clients to think hard about how an exhibition might appeal to a particular publication or broadcaster rather than sending everything out to everyone.
I recently met the arts and entertainment people at BBC News who said they were not especially interested in a curatorial angle to cultural events. They prefer something that will make a human-interest story and I guess I’m paid to think about those hooks.
Overall, there’s less money around in PR budgets and a by-product of that is I’m also being asked to mentor inexperienced marketing people so museums and galleries can keep the work in-house and cost-effective.
I loved my time working in museums, particularly on the launch of Tate Modern, but when I subsequently received multiple requests to recommend someone to help with national campaigns, I realised there was a gap in the market.”
Hannah Boulton, head of press and marketing, British Museum, London
“The British Museum is in a good position regarding visitor numbers but, alongside all the activities taking place, we like to remind everyone about the permanent collections.
While great numbers of tourists make their way here, we’re constantly recommending British people to come again to see what has changed since the last time they visited.
Overall, museums and galleries have become noticeably better at both welcoming audiences and responding to them. Internally, more museum professionals are taking press and marketing more seriously after recognising the impact we can have.
The job is a great way of working in a museum if you’re not someone who always dreamed of being a curator of Egyptology. You operate across many disciplines, finding ways to bridge the curatorial insight with what the audience requires, and you’re always learning from a variety of people who are experts in their fields.
It is constantly changing thanks to online and social media. It’s not so long ago that we used to post printed material and transparencies to newspapers and magazines but information now needs to be disseminated at frightening speeds.
If we’re doing a press launch here about a new exhibition or discovery, we want to ensure that we are, in effect, publishing the information first through live tweeting and online posting.
But we also know that people still attach importance to information coming from a traditional, trusted source so we always ensure the message also goes out through the print and broadcast media, too.”
Victoria Pinnington, director of communications, Horniman Museum and Gardens, London
“A lot of work has been carried out on our brand identity, our tone of voice, our values and our communications output and we embed marketing activity right at the beginning of every project, from planning new exhibitions or the redisplay of a gallery to fundraising, the products in our shop and the items on our cafe menu.
It’s taken a lot of work to win the hearts and minds of some museum colleagues about the value of all this and we’re not fully there yet but we’re in a healthy place.
However, the Horniman is in something of a cultural cold spot, geographically-speaking, and the majority of our visitors come from three London boroughs so we have positive positioning as a local community museum that happens to have world-class collections.
Our events programme is, therefore, important; we recently hosted an Edwardian dance weekend inspired by our collections and people came dressed up for it.
It’s important that our audience feels comfortable coming here and recent Association of Leading Visitor Attractions benchmarking data shows we’re the highest-rated museum for repeat visits.”
Laura Wakelin, director of communications and marketing, Black Country Living Museum, Dudley
“We’ve deliberately made our marketing material more family-friendly in terms of text and imagery rather than it concentrating purely on the collections and buildings as it has in the past.
Hiring out our open-air site of historic streets and buildings for use by broadcasters and film-makers is a very effective way of promoting ourselves. The BBC’s Peaky Blinders and Dancing on the Edge programmes were part-filmed here and we have a couple of really big dramas in the pipeline.
As well as generating income, it is important that we establish a reputation in the industry so that when programmes go to air we can simultaneously talk about the location via the press and social media.
Some museums like to outsource their PR and marketing to external agencies. This can be advantageous when you have a finite budget and regular events but I think keeping it in-house works better when someone with specialist knowledge about the museum is available to respond quickly to news stories.
The good thing about museum PR is that you can see any differences that you make really quickly, which is very rewarding.”
John Holt is a freelance journalist
What's the story?
Andrew Marcus
“We strongly pushed the glamour element when we launched the Cheapside Hoard exhibition (above), undertaking a lot of work with the high-end fashion press. We had the jewellery editor at Vogue talk about the importance of the hoard. Traditionally, you put a quote from a thought leader in a press release but we filmed her and had upwards of 6,000 views online, which is a big number for a brand such as ours. Google Analytics showed that a very high proportion of the people who watched it subsequently bought a ticket for the exhibition.”
Catharine Braithwaite
“The Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool put on a show comprising old photographs of the seaside selected by a contemporary artist (right, Geoff Buono, South Pier Box Office) and wanted to push the artistic side exclusively but I thought the seaside theme was ripe for the media during an English summer. It attracted massive spreads in the press and the curator was invited on to a BBC Radio 2 arts programme. You don’t have to be in London to get noticed.”
Catrin Taylor
“We recently communicated David Anderson’s [the director general of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, above] views about the inequality of arts coverage and funding through our blog. It was picked up by the press and gathered momentum and we’re now looking at holding a national event on the topic.”
Hannah Boulton
“It was a privilege to have been involved in the British Museum’s role in the aftermath of the looting of the museums in Iraq (above, the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad) in 2003, which helped to highlight a global issue; whenever cultural heritage is at risk, this institution leads the way in raising awkward questions.”
Victoria Pinnington
“It was a bit of a risk letting our iconic overstuffed walrus out of the gallery for the Curiosity exhibition at Margate’s Turner Contemporary and we had to minimise any negative impact his absence might cause. We used social media and user-generated content, asking people to leave messages about how they felt about him.
There’s generally less reliance on print media in what we do these days. Then there was a PR campaign about his departure and film of him being lifted out of the gallery, which was a very specialist operation. He tweeted about his journey and we sold a lot of toy walruses in the museum shop.”
Laura Wakelin
“Recently, the great-grandson of the greengrocer who originally used one of the buildings brought to our site came to visit his family’s old shop (above). It was a lovely story that received some great national coverage.”