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At one point during the pandemic, I was working on a project that required museum-based definitions of terms related to audience development and museum activities. First, I flipped through a few books at the library, but couldn't find the book I was looking for. I then surfed the net but didn't get anything. I decided to reach out to one of my most trusted marketing experts and friends, James Heaton, and thought he might have the answer. We hopped on the phone and agreed that the lack of information in this case could be evidence of a larger problem. Why was there so little clarity about marketing and audience-centered terminology in museums? Wouldn't it be great to have one unified resource for solving this?
Ultimately, this led to a group call with leaders in museum marketing, communications, and audience engagement, where we worked together to create the now published (and recently bilingual) Museum agreed to begin a multi-year collaboration. A glossary of marketing, communications, and audience engagement terms. Below is the first part of his two-part blog post interviewing James, followed by interviews with several members of the writing team.
In our conversation with James, we discussed the role of marketing and communications in museums, the importance of audience-centered museum initiatives, and how the Glossary aims to break down silos in the field.
Adam Rosan: Hello, James. Could you introduce yourself and share what you do?
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James Heaton: I'm the founder and chief strategist at Tromvig. Tronvig is a brand strategy and advertising agency with a long-standing focus on museums.
AR: Can you tell us more about your work at the museum in Tromvig?
JH: We support cultural organizations through brand strategy, organizational coordination, and advertising. These services may be provided sequentially or a la carte.
AR: How did you start working with museums and what inspired you?
JH: We caught the museum bug in 2010 with the New York Historical Society. We won an open RFP and engaged closely with them over the next several years.
AR: In essence, is the work of marketing and branding based on self-reflection for organizations to better look at themselves and understand their value proposition and relationships with their customers and audiences?
JH: Branding work involves a lot of self-reflection, but marketing is really about understanding your customer (I use this term generally and includes your audience, visitors, and patrons) That is important. The core question of a brand is: Who are we? “What is our differentiating promise to our customers?” A central marketing question is “Who is our customer?” “What do they value?”
AR: Given your background and experience working in museums, could you share your perspective on the unfortunate relationship between the museum field and marketing? have never met. Despite the important work that marketing does in our field, it is often relegated to the margins. Why is that? And what can we do about it?
JH: Part of the problem is structural. Marketing is a core business function, and museums are nonprofit businesses. Yet museums often separate marketing functions such as digital communications and audience research and place them outside of marketing. Museums often think of marketing in terms of communications/PR, and I've often seen marketing treated as a service (e.g., “Go promote this exhibition and get press coverage.”) ). This naive understanding of the role that marketing plays is how I see it. This is a holdover from a time when museums were more sheltered academic and public institutions, didn't have to worry too much about marketing or customers, and could safely spend almost all their time and energy on product development. .
There is also the issue of credential asymmetry. Curators have advanced degrees and often become museum directors. Because marketers typically do not have Ph.D.s and are not eligible for curatorial positions, their expertise is often given little respect and they are given little operational autonomy, which can result in museums makes it difficult to recruit talented people. It's very frustrating for marketers to be in an organization that doesn't understand marketing.
I once ran a workshop with a museum client's marketing and curatorial teams. Then we did an exercise where each group explained the other group's activities. The marketing department was able to come up with an answer that satisfied the curation team. Still, curators had only the vaguest notion of what it would take to get people through the door to see and appreciate their work.
What can you do? Marketing is becoming increasingly specialized within this field. This trend will accelerate as leadership recognizes that marketing is a strategic function that should not be fragmented and should be staffed and funded as a core function. Marketing must also be recognized as the voice of the customer and included at the product development table. These measures will bring museums closer to best practices.
AR: With this in mind, please share your recommendations for museums and the museum sector on why marketing and communications are essential functions and tools to engage and educate the public. mosquito?
JH: If the mission is important and serving the customer (audience, visitor, patron) is important to accomplishing that mission, then marketing understands the customer and what the customer understands. There is one core function whose primary responsibility is to ensure that: The value that museums bring. If we exist to serve the public as well as ourselves, marketing is a vital link between museums and their publics.
AR: Before we start talking about the museum glossary, I'd love to hear about the health of the museum sector and where you think it needs to evolve.
JH: The museum sector is facing an existential crisis.
Are museums obsolete postcolonial relics, or are they important instigators of new ideas and deeper understanding of essential matters that cannot otherwise be accessed or fully enjoyed? Is it something that inspires you? If the past is no guide, what must museums do now to remain relevant in a society that is constantly changing rapidly and always experiencing some kind of disaster? is a serious project.
What is the purpose of a museum? Why does it exist? It also plays an important role for our customers and society, and what we do to ensure that both support its survival and want it to remain in their lives and the lives of the communities we share. Is not it?
AR: Can you touch on DEI initiatives and its importance to museums, and how you think museums can do this internally for their staff and externally for their audiences? Could you tell me more about it?
JH: In my opinion, authentic and meaningful expression is the best part of the job. This is for your staff, your leadership, and your audience. The comfortable isolation of the “academy” is now dangerous to the long-term sustainability of the museum. We encourage you to identify and break the many written and unwritten rules that isolate and maintain current power structures, and to find ways to actively undermine the strong staying power of the status quo. The pandemic was a dry run for the rest of this century. You'll be more comfortable with the growing dissonance and disagreements on the inside, and you'll be better equipped to weather the inevitable and relentless storms on the outside.
This probably sounds overly dramatic to most people's ears. Is it really that dire? Demographics are an inexorable force that can only be ignored at significant risk.
AR: What is a museum glossary? Why do we need it?
JH: It's a shot in the dark. An attempt to devise a resource that will help raise the level of discussion regarding the field of professional marketing in museums. Perhaps better museum-specific definitions of key terms would reduce conversations with each other and foster greater cross-departmental understanding within museums. Perhaps more fruitful collaborations will grow from these few seeds.
AR: You write about the origins of museum glossaries, in which we spoke on the phone about the need for a common language and how it would allow staff and teams to work better together and better support the public. We talked about how to become like this. So how do shared languages and definitions make that happen?
JH: As you know, the glossary was conceived as a level set between functional units within the museum. Disagreeing about what X is, how it is used, and why it matters makes it difficult to collaborate effectively. Collaboration is more than just a “nice to have.” Museums don't need marketing teams, development teams, and curatorial teams working for different purposes. The stakes are too high for this.museums must be 1 team It is made up of specialized units, each contributing their expertise to achieve a common goal. This is the only way museums can thrive in the difficult times ahead.
AR: Last question: What are the next steps for this project?
JH: Thanks to ICOM-MPR and ICOM Mexico, we started offering services in Spanish. Keep adding definitions, albeit slowly. So the most important thing is to make sure people know about it and use it.
