transforming museums through...
TRANSCRIPT
Transforming Museums through Branding
Ami Tseng
Director of Marketing & Brand Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
ICOM-MPR Annual Meeting September 2, 2014
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Good morning. My name is Ami Tseng and today I’ll be sharing with you how branding has had a transformative effect on the Asian Art Museum.
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For those of you who may not be familiar with the museum, let me give you a quick introduction. The Asian Art Museum is located in San Francisco, California and our mission is to introduce a diverse, global audience to Asian art and culture. Originally located in Golden Gate Park, we moved to our current location in 2003.
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The museum has a collection of over 18,000 objects representing all of the major regions of Asia We have 29,000 square feet of collection gallery space and 8,500 square feet of exhibition space We have a staff of approximately 200 people
Why Branding?
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So why did we decide to undergo a branding exercise? There were two main reasons:
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The first one was the arrival of our current museum director Dr. Jay Xu in 2008. He had an exciting new artistic vision for the museum which involved sparking connections across cultures and through time. With the change in leadership and vision we thought it would be a good time to reconsider our brand.
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The second reason was that the museum wanted to reinvent itself to connect with more visitors beyond a niche audience. We felt that undergoing a branding exercise – where we would identify our brand idea – would be an effective way to understand how we could fully deliver on our artistic vision while increasing our relevance to our audiences. A clear brand idea would also provide internal focus.
How we did it
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So how did we do it? At the time I was the Associate Director of Marketing and Communications. I served as the project manager, and the Director of Marketing Communications was the project lead. First, in addition to winning the support of our museum director for the project, we had to win the support of the senior management team and key board members
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This is where we encountered our first challenge – a general lack of understanding of what branding is (Why do we need to do this? People would ask. We already have a logo and business cards.) It took us about 6 months of explaining that brand doesn’t just mean a logo and advocating for the project before we could proceed.
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The next thing we did was to conduct a RFP process and we ended up hiring Wolff Olins, a brand consultancy firm. You’ll hear more about Wolff Olins’ branding approach during Nick’s keynote address later today. We worked with WO for 6 months on defining our brand idea. This included a significant amount of research and discovery – talking to external audiences and internal stakeholders – while examining macrotrends to see what our museum could offer the world.
Our Vision: Spark connections across cultures and through time
Our Brand Idea: Awaken the Past, Inspire the Next
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At the end of the 6 months, we came up with our brand idea: Awaken the Past, Inspire the Next. In other words, we wanted to awaken global audiences to the beauty and significance of Asian art and culture, but we wanted to do so in such a way that it sparks connections, changes perceptions, and inspires new thinking and creativity.
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We then worked with WO for another 3 months on refreshing our identity to reflect our new brand idea. So we went from this (show old logo) to this (show new logo). With the new logo we wanted to make a bold statement, and to immediately challenge your perception (why is the A upside down?). And finally, in mathematics an inverted/upside A is the symbol “for all”, which is true to the museum’s aspirations.
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We rolled out the new brand internally during the summer of 2011, and launched it publicly in September that year. So we’ve just celebrated the 4th anniversary of our brand.
Impact
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The branding exercise has had a transformative impact on the museum in several ways.
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For example, in museum management and decision making. Our brand is now a key criteria when making decisions. In fact, we recently developed the museum’s first-ever business plan, because we understand that brand implementation is a multi-year effort, and we wanted to make sure that we had identified the areas where we needed to invest in, and what resources we would need along the way.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE - BEFORE
Director and CEO
Curatorial
Education & Public
Programs Museum Services Development Marketing &
PR Finance & Operations HR
• Curatorial • Research
Center • Library • Publications
• Finance • IT • Facilities &
Operations • Security • Engineering • Visitor
Services • Museum store • Café
• HR • Volunteer
Management
• Individuals • Government • Corporate • Foundations • Legacy Giving • Special Events • Facility Rentals
• Marketing • Public
Relations
• Education & Public Programs
• Conservation • Registration • Preparation • Image
Services
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It has also had an impact on the organizational structure of the museum. This is what the museum’s organizational structure looked like, before we began the branding exercise.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE - AFTER
Director and CEO
Art & Programs
Audience & Business
Development Development Finance &
Operations Human
Resources
• Curatorial • Education & Public
Programs • Interpretation • Research Center • Library • Conservation • Registration • Preparation • Image Services • Publications
• Marketing & Brand • Public Relations • Web and Digital
Media • Creative Services • Visitor Services • Museum store • Café
• Finance • IT • Facilities &
Operations • Security • Engineering
• HR • Volunteer
Management
• Individuals • Government • Corporate • Foundations • Legacy Giving • Special Events • Facility Rentals
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Prior to beginning brand implementation, Jay reorganized the museum into divisions, with the intent for the Art & Programs division to work closely with the Audience and Business Development Division. You can see that the key visitor-facing departments (indicated in yellow) were consolidated into one division, and some new functions (highlighted in green) were created to support the brand. At the same time I was appointed to be the internal brand manager, in addition to overseeing marketing.
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We also now recruit and hire new staff with our brand in mind. (yes, I’m in one of these photos!)
1) More Visitor-Focused
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We have started to see some shifts in the museum’s organizational culture. For example, we are now much more visitor-focused. We realized that interpretation (providing context and helping visitors draw connections) is key. So we’re developing and testing a new interpretative strategy.
Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy exhibition Oct 5, 2012 – Jan 13, 2013
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During a recent Chinese calligraphy exhibition, for example, we took pains to help visitors figure out how to look at and appreciate Chinese calligraphy, so that they could enjoy the exhibition more.
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After we launched the brand, we also recruited a new class of docents to undergo our 3-year docent training program. These new docents were chosen with our brand in mind, and were taught a different way of telling our visitors about our art that’s more interactive and helps our visitors make connections with the art.
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And during our recent Yoga exhibition, to help visitors draw a connection between what they were seeing to yoga in their own lives, we had an activity station where visitors could jot down their memories and experiences of yoga, especially within the California context.
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Along the way, we encountered our second challenge, which is tension between the curatorial department’s desire to maintain excellent scholarship with a more accessible, visitor-focused approach. We see this tension over exhibition topics to how interpretation is used in the galleries. These goals are not mutually exclusive, but we will need to continue to find the balance and ensure everyone is comfortable with where we are heading.
2) More experimental
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The second shift we are seeing in our internal culture, is more of a willingness to experiment, and to fail. We realize that in order to push our brand forward means we need to think and do things differently. And in order to that, we need to be not afraid to fail.
Gorgeous exhibition June 28-Sept 14, 2014
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For example, this summer we had the opportunity to collaborate with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on a special exhibition. The exhibition explores the idea and meaning of the word “gorgeous”. Our curators decided to try a new approach. Instead of our usual layers of interpretation, visitors were encouraged to form their own opinions and thoughts regarding the artworks. We also provided informal labels written in the curators’ voices that were signed by them
Exhibition catalogue
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Even our exhibition catalogue was non-traditional – it was designed like a fashion magazine.
Public Programs
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Brand is also the touchstone for our programming direction. We have started to work with more local, contemporary artists on our public programs, where we encourage them to draw inspiration from our collection For example, here a local artist and instructor has used the museum as a project for the students in her social practice class. She asked her students to think of artifacts as cultural transmitters, and to each devise a “future artifact” that responded to a specific object in our collection. They then conducted a procession with these artifacts through our collection galleries on the 3rd floor.
Marketing
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And on the marketing front, our brand has provided the platform for more innovative marketing For example, last spring the museum presented the special exhibition China’s Terracotta Warriors. To drive attendance and revenue, and to make a statement about our new brand, we devised the campaign Operation: Lost Warrior. The fun, promotional campaign revolved around the premise that one of the terracotta warriors on his way to us from China for the exhibition had gotten lost in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we needed the public’s help to find him before the exhibition opened. I’ll be sharing more information about this campaign during my flash session presentation later this afternoon.
Results
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So what have the results been to date?
Results (Sept 2011 – June 2013): • 25% increase in website visitors • 21% increase in members • 10% increase in annual contributed income
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So far, we’ve seen a rise in website visitors, museum members, and in contributed income, which are donations to the museum.
3-D Printing Scan-a-thon with Autodesk
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Our greater visibility has also led to some interesting partnerships which has allowed us to reach new audiences. For example, in Sept 2012 we were the first West Coast museum to conduct a scan-a-thon We partnered with Autodesk and invited people to take 360 degree photos of key objects in our collection. Using Autodesk’s software, they created 3-D replicas of them, such as this little guy here.
Partnership with Khan Academy
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Since March of this year, we have also been offering online courses on Asian art history through the Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational website that reaches over ten million students a month.
100K 248K followers 8.8K 27K Likes
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And finally, we have had significant growth in social media over the past few years – our followers on Twitter have more than doubled, and our Facebook likes have tripled. In general, we have noticed more “buzz” about the museum.
Summary • Branding has been
transformative for our museum, and we’re starting to see positive outcomes
• But we still have a long journey ahead
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We recognize that brand implementation never stops, and great brands take years to build.
Thank You
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