This summer, when visiting the Newseum for the first time, I stepped into the restroom. And it ended up being one of my favorite spots in the museums. Why? It was tiled with giggle-inducing headlines like this one:
Restrooms. We all have to have them, we all have to use them. We have
talked about restrooms before on this blog, primarily in the context of
how clean they are. Totally important. (The Newseum's restrooms were very clean.) But is there an opportunity for engaging our audiences more deeply . . . in the loo?
Everyone loves a clean restroom. I like an
interesting restroom. It bugs me when I go to an art museum, for example, and
the walls are bare white. It's like a blank canvas - couldn't they even find a
university student to come in and do a mural for them or something? Or maybe even
put some of the collection that's rotated out in the ladies' waiting area (and
gentleman's equivalent, if they have them). Or at a science museum - paint the
periodic table on the walls, tile in the Fibonacci sequence. It just shows such
attention to detail, and how neat is it to come out and tell your friends,
"Okay, you have GOT to check out that bathroom!"
- 25-year-old woman
The USS Constitution Museum has been using their restroom as an interpretive tool for years (an interpretive panel can be seen in the image below; why my beloved dog, Shadow, is posing with it wearing a holiday scarf is a completely different story). Asking, and answering, where the sailors "went" is educational, funny, and gives people something to talk about.
Yet there is something else about this restroom that makes people talk. As Robert Kiihne, the museum's Director of Exhibits, recently posted on their excellent Family Learning Forum, their restrooms are also ". . . dark, grey . . . and poorly ventilated.
Visitors complain about them - even when the restrooms have just been
cleaned. I am sure that for every visitor that complains 10 more are
just turned off."
Which takes us back, of course, to cleanliness. So clean restrooms, yes. You do not want to be remarkable for your dirty (or just dimly lit) restrooms. But now that you have that covered, what can you do to make your restrooms remarkable in an exciting and creative way?
(Finally, the excellent Elizabeth Merritt of AAM would likely badger me if I neglected to mention the splendid Art Museum Toilet Museum of Art. Check it out.)
Are the restrooms in your museum remarkable? Why? Or have you seen particularly remarkable restrooms? What makes them so? Simply click on “comments”
below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).
And if you do have remarkable restrooms in your museum, send us a photo and we'll post it for you. Send photos to susie (at) reachadvisors (dot) com.
-Susie
Check out these fantastic photos from the Pacific Science Center. These Grossology restrooms are truly remarkable. Felicia Maffia, the Director of Exhibit Development, shared with us, "It's really fun for staff to overhear some of the great conversations that happen when visitors encounter these two restrooms." Thanks, Felicia, for sending these along!
We didn't really mean to continue in the cleanliness theme this week. Really. But when this floated across my desktop just moments ago, I knew I had to share.
We have mentioned more than once on this blog how important cleanliness is to the current generation of parents. My Gen X peers who are parents are just more likely to be germaphobic (and I am too, despite not being a parent).
Turns out, there is a website, www.sitorsquat.com, complete with an iPhone applet, that combines ratings of restroom cleanliness with a mapping tool. So you can always find a clean restroom nearby.
So I started playing with the site, out of professional curiosity (of course - though I had to share it with my sister first!). After checking my hometown, Quincy, I started checking to see if I could find any museums. The Met gets 4/5 stars and a "sit" recommendation, while the National Museum of Natural History in DC gets 5/5. But most of the museums I searched for were not listed at all.
People notice restroom cleanliness, and it is important to them. It indicates that visitors are cared about. For some people, it can make or break a visit. And now they have a way to share where the "best" ones are. Or where the "worst" ones are.
Yes, the site is a little goofy. But if I were running a museum, I would make sure that my clean restrooms were added to the site. And I would not turn away people who come in just to use the restrooms either. They might end up staying . . . or coming back. Because the more people we get in the door, the greater the chance we have to reach people, touch them, and engage them. Even if it starts with our clean restrooms.
Or maybe blown away by this
extraordinarily poor acknowledgment I just received from another organization.
So bad I had to, once again, scan and share in its entirety (the blackouts
are sparing the identity of the sender).
Oh,
where to begin. First, how impersonal. I have no identity. I
am simply “member.” I just spent a lot of money renewing, and they
cannot manage to address me by name? Additionally, no one signed the
letter. No one. It would have been nice to have someone, anyone,
sign off on it.
But
here is the big, honking problem. Something is missing. The most
important thing of all.
They
never said thank you.
Not
once.
Nada.
Ok,
sure, the benefits are nice, and yes, I like benefits.
But
no thank you? Come on!
The
culprit? I am going to spare the organization by not naming it, but
suffice it to say it is not an American museum or museums
association.
I am pretty jaded when it comes to fundraising appeals . . . and to gift acknowledgements. I have written more than my share of both during my career. And my husband and I try to give as generously as we can to a number of organizations.
So it is not often when I am impressed by either. Yet I was pretty darn gob-smacked by the recent thank you note I received from WalkBoston(it came with a more formal gift acknowledgement). So impressed I had to scan the thing and share it.
OK, here is why I was so impressed:
1 - The note is handwritten. By the Executive Director. Not just a note scribbled on the top of a form letter (though that is noted and appreciated as well). But an actual separate piece of paper with a full note on it. This made it personal.
2 - It invites me to become involved immediately. Not by giving more money (getting hit up again in the same envelope as a thank you is a pet peeve). No. They want me to get involved in their advocacy efforts. They want ME, not just my money.
3 - They are already asking me for my feedback. They want to know what is on my mind . . . and what I think is important for them to look into. Not only do they want ME, they want MY OPINION!
4 - They sent me a nifty guide book. Which I was not expecting and was surprised and delighted by. (AAM also recently surprised and delighted me with a sticker for our car that says Support America's Museums. We are not car sticker/bumper sticker people, but it is SO going on the station wagon whether my husband likes it or not!) Kudos to both WalkBoston and AAM for giving me unexpected warm fuzzies.
5 - They invite me to a specific program. Warmly.
My husband was the one who wanted us to make a contribution to WalkBoston, and I happily went along with it. But now I really want to know more about it and feel a hundered, maybe a thousand times better about our gift, and the organization, because this note made it personal. And gave me warm fuzzies.
How much time did it take Wendy Landman, the Executive Director of WalkBoston to write this? Maybe two minutes. The impact? At a minimum, an easy renewal. But likely a couple of advocates and long-term supporters.
Has a thank you note ever bowled you over?Or
are there ways you try to create personal connections like WalkBoston did? We would love to hear about it!To share your stories, simply click on
“comments” below. (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription
to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a
comment.)
Last weekend, Museum Audience Insight editor and contributor Susie Wilkening
found the epicenter of young Extremely Creative Consumers (ECCs) in Boston at
the Bazaar Bizarre (this is event is what you might call an “alternative” craft
fair. Its tag line:not your granny’s craft fair!). One week earlier, Jennifer Caleshu, Director
of Communications at the Bay Area Discovery Museum (and occasional Museum
Audience Insight contributor) had a
similar experience at the Bazaar Bizarre San Franscisco. Over the past few days, they compared notes.
Jennifer:My husband reconnected with an old friend
recently, and she was a vendor at the SF Bazaar Bizarre, so we went. We’re also pretty crafty
people – both my husband and I knit, among many crafty pursuits – and we love
seeing the ingenuity and beauty of work by individuals.
Susie:I
went because my colleague, Sally, and I are very interested in young Extremely
Creative Consumers – especially those in their 20s. And wow! This
event had them, both as vendors and shoppers.So I had to wait 40 minutes (in the cold and snow, mind you) to get
in. It was that popular. There were thousands there.
Jennifer:The Bazaar Bizarre SF was pretty
busy - there was a bit of a line much of the day.I could
definitely see who the popular vendors were – big crowds around the stuffed
body parts people. We definitely saw
lots of ECCs – and parent, too – there were a lot of strollers. We would
absolutely classify ourselves as ECC – and I’m interested to see how our crafty
generation grows up, and how we raise our kids. The parents we saw at the SF Bazaar
Bizarre are definitely looking to raise kids who do not conform to the
traditional artist model.My children’s
museum (baykidsmuseum.org) has recently repositioned ourselves around childhood
creativity, building on this interest in art and craft through open-ended play
and nurturing the next generation of creative thinkers and innovators.
Susie:I
noticed a lot of people in their 20s and early 30s, some with strollers, as
well. In fact, my friend and I estimated that the average age of
attendees was about 26 or 27. That is incredibly low for a craft fair.
You know, ECCs feel more strongly than non-ECCs
that their stuff reflects their personality, and one of the things I noticed
was that a lot of the vendors had tapped into that, and the life stage of a
very youthful crowd. They were much more likely to be selling
one-of-a-kind personal adornment items, such as jewelry, scarves, fashion
accessories, and hand-printed t-shirts than you would see at a traditional
craft show. There was not a lot in the way of home furnishings, which may
reflect the young life stage of so many of the attendees.
Jennifer:I think the
one-of-a-kind personal adornment items – they’re part of the larger movement
towards owning a personal brand – as we’ve talked about before re: Facebook and
other social marketing sites. If you’re constantly curating your own online
brand, it only makes sense that you’re also curating a physical brand that is
one-of-a-kind, not mass market, made by yourself or other individuals with whom
you create a connection by supporting.
Susie:I think you are
right. This is a young generation all about personal expression and
personal branding, and for whom personal creativity (whether their own or
purchased) is a way of standing out from the crowd.
There was something else that kept niggling at me
at the Bazaar Bizarre. Here I was, surrounded by literally a couple of
thousand of young ECCs, and literally tons of creative output being marketed by
and to young ECCs. Yet museums, the repositories of mankind’s creative
effort, were missing. It seems like such an incredible opportunity to
reach an audience that is interested in artistic endeavors yet not going to
museums in large numbers.
Jennifer:So true – I absolutely
feel that, by and large, museums have a top-down authority reputation that just
does not sit will with young ECCs. And
by not attending something like this, they just reinforce the fact that they’re
out-of-the-loop and out-of-touch with this generation of makers.One of the local museums here currently has a
participatory art exhibition that would have been a perfect fit for the Bazaar
Bizarre.
I’m also interested in how the ECCs view art vs.
craft vs. design – how the young, alternative handmade market in person and
online (think etsy.com) relates to the traditional craft fair – what we’d call
“crappy-craft” – or a curated Museum store.
Susie:That is interesting.I wonder what the young, hip, and very
cutting-edge vendors I saw at the Bazaar Bizarre think about museums, the art
and craft in museums, and whether they see museums as places of inspiration or
part of the establishment they are creatively rebelling against. Which is why I would love to see museums
recognize their work because it can open up creative possibilities and help
these young crafters share their work more broadly.
So
maybe a lost opportunity for this year, but I hope to see some kind of museum
presence next year. By the way, I
am definitely going next year (though maybe I will pay extra for an early-bird
ticket – it was crowded!). You?
Jennifer:Yes! I will be there –
in fact, I’m a bit inspired to set a goal of being there as a vendor! Stay
tuned…
Susie:Hmmm.
. . I am not as ambitious as you, but it did inspire me to tackle this year’s
handmade Christmas gifts with new gusto!
Museum Audience Insight is delighted to
welcome the inaugural post of Tara May, Senior
Consultant at Reach Advisors. Tara has extensive experience in marketing strategy
and public relations, and one of her primary roles at Reach Advisors is
advising clients on their communications strategy. You can look forward
to more posts by Tara on branding, public
relations, and communications, as well as other topics, in the future.
When I agreed to go along with my husband’s latest
recreational purchase, I had no idea that, with it, came our automatic
membership into a cult. After months of discussing our need for a
snow-worthy vehicle (we live in the mountains of Colorado, we decided to purchase a Toyota
FJ Cruiser. Perhaps you’ve seen these beauties on the road – it looks
like a Tonka toy.
Having owned several Toyotas before, we were easy prey
for the marketing gurus at Toyota. But I, a seasoned marketing professional, was unprepared for the brand
barrage that was about to hit. During our investigation phase, we did
due diligence by checking out noteworthy car review websites but my husband
spent about 99% of his research time watching extreme off-road videos of the
vehicles in places like Moab, Utah, crawling up jagged rock faces and tumbling
through mud bogs. These videos are what eventually sold him, even though
our day-to-day needs for the vehicle do not involve scaling sheer cliffs.
We made the decision to buy and headed out to our
friendly Toyota dealership, where Ernesto couldn’t be more pleasant to my husband – goading him
into thinking of his future profession as a stunt driver – or empathetic to me
– reminding me of the gas mileage efficiencies compared to other performance
vehicles. Once the sale was complete, my husband began his initiation
into the FJ cult and took me along for the ride. We joined an
FJ owners club, we subscribed to a newsletter, we joined online discussion
group and, maybe not this year but I’m sure soon enough, we’ll be attending an
FJ rally in one of those deserts with plenty of sheer rock that will bring to
life our locking rear-differential vehicle.
What does my husband’s cult of FJ joyriders have to do
with museums? Because our time under the warm embrace of the FJ has truly been
one of the most profound brand encounters I’ve had. And, I’d love
to replicate it for museums. While you may not have the resources to pour
into a branding agency (like I’m sure Toyota does, you can replicate their success by diving deeper into the meaning of
your brand and delivering on it more consistently.
If I asked you what constitutes your brand – what’s
under the hood of your brand – how would you answer? Your brand is much
more than a logo or a set of rules governing the use of that logo. Your
brand is much more than a one-page backgrounder on your organization.
And, it certainly isn’t just your website. Rather than keep you guessing,
I offer what are generally agreed upon as the four key components of a brand:
1. The brand position: The position conveys the basics -- what an
organization does and for whom – and also tells how it does the basics
differently from all others. What is the organization’s unique
value? How does it meet community needs in a way that no other
organization is doing?
While it’s important to position the organization
where it wants to be, it’s also important to acknowledge where you are.
And the most important location to consider is where you are in the minds of
your customers. You must strike a balance between where you want to be
and what the public will allow you to be, given their current preconceptions of
you. These perceptions are sometimes collectively referred to as your
brand image.
McDonald’s has long held a brand position as the
high-value, high-convenience food provider that gave Mom a break. But it
had a much harder time convincing prospective patrons that, beyond the family
fun induced by Mom’s respite from the kitchen, their food was also good for
you. Their brand image was largely rooted in less-than-healthy fare and
it had to face that perception reality when it initially launched its new salad
lines.
2. The brand promise: The promise should summarize what the organization
promises to deliver its customers. The promise is what customers should
expect from every interaction – how will their lives be changed as a result of
their encounter with the organization?
The brand promise might
also be called the brand beliefs because you want to communicate your promise
in such as way so that frequent customers associate them with your business and
those who have never been customers have similar impressions. For example, I
don’t own an iPhone but I believe that, if I did, I would encounter “cool
innovation,” which is Apple’s brand promise.
It’s one thing to make a promise, but another to keep
it. Beyond a promise, an organization must also show how it keeps its
word. How is the promise delivered in every action? What are
the programs, who are the people, where are the places that ensure promises are
kept in this organization?
3. The brand personality: The personality of a brand includes those
characteristics that the brand wants to be known for. These descriptions
can be borrowed from other spheres -- think about what color represents your
organization. Similarly consider what car, animal, style of architecture,
plant, weapon, TV show, or member of Congress might convey the spirit of your
organization.
Sometimes taking cues from other industries can offer
a shortcut in understanding. For example, if you described your
organization as the Lamborghini of museums, people would quickly assume that
your museum was fast, exotic, and had a rabid fan base.
4. The signature statement: After developing and document all that constitutes
your brand, you could very well wind up with a book, a biography of your
organization that is commonly referred to as your Brand Book*. The
Brand Book has great value in giving all employees a consistent vision of the
organization and giving them the language they need to talk about it. As
your most important ambassadors, employees should have intimate knowledge of
your brand.
In addition to your Brand Book, it’s also good to have
a touchstone, a signature statement to serve as your shorthand way of saying a
lot. This statement doesn’t need to be your organization’s tagline, but
an internal moniker to serve as a rally cry. It can be an acronym,
exclamation, phrase or sentence that encapsulates the very essence of your
brand.
While these are the
essentials, a successful brand is about much more than words on a page. A
successful brand must jump outside of the Brand Book and into the lives of your
customers, patrons, employees, board members, and so on. Your brand must
be a part of a transformation, an initiation, a conversion of sorts.
It must surround your customer. Beyond the basics of branding, how can
you create a transformative brand experience?
Commit. Consistent
delivery of a brand experience requires a complete understanding of an
organization’s brand and an absolute commitment to it by the leadership
and everyone else in that organization.
Communicate your brand
all the time. Successful organizations understand that every
interaction presents an opportunity to share the brand and create a
transformative experience. Every touchpoint – from the cashier at
the admissions desk to the security guard at the exhibit – counts to the
consumer and it is the accumulation of those encounters that creates an
impression.
Convene your brand
enthusiasts and sustain their interaction. Give them a place to
gather, share your messages and provide them the tools to share
them. For the FJ’ers, the online community is just part of the
experience leading up to a series of gatherings across the country.
See what your museum can do to support an ongoing dialogue among your
brand champions in between the big events.
Now that you know how to surround your customer with
transformative brand experiences, I can get back to the important stuff…like
buying a snazzy new bumper for our FJ.
*We’ll talk more about Brand Books on our
next blog devoted to branding.
Here is a little lagniappe for your Monday morning. Right now, the majority of young parents
coming through your museum doors are probably Generation Xers in their thirties and very
early forties.They like coming to your
museum because it is a good place for a family learning experience. But what else do they like to do?
In our research and survey work, we often ask, and here is
what they say, via a top-ten list (with a few comments . . . of course!).
10) Consumer
technology
Gen Xers were
teenagers, in their twenties with the Internet hit the big time. They enjoy it.But keep in mind that it is not as important to them as it is to the
Generation Ys in their teens and twenties now, who positively live and breath
the stuff.
9)Games/puzzles
8)Cars/boats
For Baby Boomers,
this would be higher. Just not a big a
deal for Gen Xers, especially since few Gen Xers have the discretionary
income to buy a boat.
7)Artistic endeavors
This started to
bloom a bit for Gen Xers.But this is
far more important to Generation Y. Look
for a post on this topic soon!
6)Fitness
5)Playing music
4)Home arts
Gen Xers are
nesters, so this pops up higher for Xers than for Boomers.Xers were settling down right when Trading
Spaces hit it big. Design on a
budget is a good thing for this generation always making financial tradeoffs.
3)Cooking/dining
Fits right in with
the interest in home arts.
2)Spectator sports
Hey, sports are
always popular. But some historic sites tap into this interest by fielding nineteenth-century base ball teams, such as the Muffins, pictured above, who are an Ohio Village Vintage Base Ball Team playing for the Ohio Historical Society. Conner Prairie and the Genesee Country Village and Museum field teams as well. What a great way to combine history, spectator sports, and our number one . . .
1)Outdoor recreation
By a mile. This is the generation that loves to throw
stuff on the top of their cars. You
know.The kayak.The bike.As parents, they take their kids outdoors whenever they can, and on a
gorgeous day will bypass the museum for the park, the hiking trail, or just the
backyard.
The good thing about
this list, however, is that a lot of the items listed are things that museums
already do rather well. And most of
these things lend themselves rather well to museum programming and exhibits.
We would love to
hear how your museum incorporates any of the items from their list into their
programming to attract young parents.Simply click on “comments”
below. (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to
the blog, please go to our blog's
website to add a comment.)
This week, we ran another one of our tours on how America’s top retailers ‘curate’ their brands, this time taking a backstage look at Barnes & Noble, L.L. Bean, Sephora, and American Eagle. Some of these brands are as distant as possible from anything that museums do. Yet many of the tour participants from the Museum Association of New York / Upstate History Alliance annual conference walked away with fresh ideas on a number of random points, including:
- At American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), the store manager described how their floor staff is trained to engage the customer (Approach>Engage>Outfit = A.E.O.). One of the tour participants asked the store manager if he knows in advance who will work out and who won’t. The store manager was pretty quick to answer, yes. They purposefully interview candidates in groups, and the ones that can engage multiple strangers in an interview are typically the ones who can engage customers with questions about what they are doing this weekend, what they need for their wardrobe, etc. One question to ponder: How many times have we seen the front-line museum staff member who’s just uncomfortable with welcoming visitors, and how can museums screen for new hires with an embracing attitude?
- Almost 100 years ago, a gentleman by the name of L.L. Bean created a new hunting boot and sold 100 pairs. 90 were returned because of a major defect. He returned their money, came back with a better boot…and turned a really bad issue into an incredibly powerful brand statement. Almost every single L.L. Bean customer today is willing to pay a bit of a premium knowing that L.L. Bean will always stand behind that purchase. What are the issues (positive and negative) that can help cement how people describe the essence of your museum?
- Sephora is an absolute machine when it comes to selling cosmetics, with a busier sales floor and cash registers than found at almost any other retailer in America. How did they get there? They broke just about every rule in the cosmetics retailing business to focus on the customer’s needs, rather than doing things the way they’ve always been done in the industry...and they are winning a lot of market share from customers who view the make-up counters at department stores as ancient history. Are there any processes at museums that create obstacles for visitors for no other reason than that’s the way things have always been done?
- In our recap discussion, one of the tour participants mentioned how the museum field has a unique and difficult thing to sell. It’s not a product, but a community center. Yet one of the goals for Barnes & Noble is to create a ‘community center.’ They have a community relations manager, and encourage groups to meet and host events at the store. They realize that creating a ‘community center’ sells books. So thinking about museums, what are ways that building the community center can ‘sell’ history/art/science/etc. as effectively as it sells books for Barnes & Noble?
Another thing that the tour participants noted was how the retailers used terms such as “authentic,” “relevance,” and “values,” or had staff whose job was essentially exhibit design. In a way, they are indeed ‘curating’ their brand experience...and some of them are setting a high bar in the minds of the general public.
While the objectives and reason-for-being is dramatically different for a retailer versus a museum, what have you seen in the retail environment that might be of interest to the field? Or what kinds of commercial activities have you seen in the museum field that concern you? Or what questions do you have from the tour or blog post that someone out there might be able answer?
Feel free to continue the dialog by hitting the “comment” link!
I know I have talked about e-mail footers before, and even shared an example from Olana State Historic Site before, but this is just too cool to not share. Can you find the 10 things wrong with this picture?
.
.
When I spoke with Carri Manchester, Olana's Director of Education, about her latest e-mail, she told me not only does she design the e-mail footers herself, but this particular one took her only about 30 minutes to produce. A relatively small amount of time for how darn fun it is.
This particular example is the kind of interactive and fun thing that is a natural to go viral and get forwarded (heck, I am forwarding it to our blog!), something that Gen X moms, a prime audience for this program, do quite a bit. It pays to continually harvest e-mail addresses off your website and from visitors because , as seen here, it is cheap, not extremely time-intensive, and high-impact. Additionally, Carri's e-mail went out to all of the hotels, chambers,
and arts councils in the area, and I bet you they are forwarding it out to
their lists because when Olana does well, they benefit.
We always love to see what kinds of cool stuff others are sending out. If you want to share an example from your museum, or one you have seen, feel free to click on "comments" below or e-mail me at susie(at)reachadvisors(dot)com with an image.
As you can see, Wednesdays seem to have mixed results, and
Mondays and Tuesdays are just not so good. But Fridays? Fridays are good.
If you have not already analyzed your e-newsletter open
rates, you might take a few minutes and do so. Are you members more receptive to e-newsletters sent on Fridays
too? Or is Wednesday your golden
day? It is a little metric that is easy
to track and easy to use to maximize your e-newsletter’s reach.
Not receiving our monthly e-newsletter but want to? Send Susie an e-mail at susie at
reachadvisors dot com and we will add you to the list! And when that first e-newsletter arrives in
your inbox, it will probably be on a Friday.
