Essay of Cédric Barrielle

CULTURAL MARKETING

from

PUBLICS ET MUSEES

(Public & museum)

About the source…

For this essay, I choiced to study three articles from the french journal Publics et musées. This is an interdisciplinary semi-annual journal created in 1992 because of the context of renovation and the creation of lot of museums, the fast development of the cultural and scientist exhibitions, and the evolution of the museum’s institution which make the public in the center of the museum research activity. This journal is now know as Culture et musées (culture and museums) and still exist. The articles I choice to study are from a special issue magazine about marketing and museums, and came out in 1997.

Redactors point of view.

In the introduction, the redactor Jean-Michel Tobelem, director of the council Option Culture and doctor in Management talk about the notion of marketing in the culture world. He says it’s a problematic notion because it sounds like a consumption concept whereas the culture suppose to be non-profitmaking. How to use marketing for culture then ? The answer of this question sounds easy for him; it’s a survival question. Indeed, culturals organisations are often few helped by extra people like mecène or government, with a few people working for them, and without too much initiative. For Jean-Michel Tobelem, marketing take place in that case, to help the organisation to keep going with money troubles.

 

Still in this introduction, Jean-Michel Tobelem talk abouts the writers of the incomings articles and starts to use some citations to explain the journal point of view. For example, he tells us what Fiona McLean (we will talk about her later) who said “L’attitude la plus raisonnable consite à dire que le marketing est un modèle pédagogique qui, s’il est utilisé à bon escient, assure la surive à long terme d’un organisme.” which means that he best behaviour is to say the marketing is a teaching benchmark which keep an organisation alive for a long time if it is well used. He also talk about Pierre Chazaud (we will talk about him later too) who wrote: “Bien connaître le comportement du consommateur culturel reste essentiel pour offrir de bons services” which means we have to know very well the consumer behavior to offer the best services. But we still have to keep in mind that in that case, we talk about a public service and not a profitmaking activity.

Anyway, this way to think about cultural marketing ask us some questions about others culturals places competition:

-Who are the visitors ?

-By visiting, what do the need, expect ?

The answer of those questions is not a way to make a project, but it still help to promote some parts of the cultural organisation to satisfact the target. By this way, the marketing can also make a better budget and schedules for example.

To conclude, Jean-Michel Tobelem writes the marketing is not the solutions of the cultural sector’s problems but is an usefull help to increase the insitution potential.

. First article: “Le passé est à vendre: réflexion sur le marketing des musées” Fiona McLean. (The past is for sale: think about museums marketing)

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find lot of information about Fiona McLean, but I know that she was born in 1961, and she wrote in both english and french languages, especially about museums.

Here is a resumed point of view of Fiona McLean about cultural marketing in the museum: Marketing, once herded as a panacea, has recently been severely criticized by museum commentators. Much of the criticism is grounded in the cultural and structural changes which reflect the development of the postmodern condition. This paper considers the marketing of museums in the postmodern, and attempts to respond to the recent criticisms. A number of suggestions are made to ensure that rather than « commercialize » marketing pursues the overall goals of the museum, namely the democratization of learning.

To go deeper, she starts this article by saying the marketing may is corrupted and immoral, and prove it by talking about political marketing during election campaign. After this warning, she made a link between marketing and museums by saying both are a postmodern symptom from the sixties. That’s why she named her article like this; indeed, the cultural marketing -for her- is “nostalgia business” where the past is a consumption.

Anyway, she thinks that is the start, and the marketing can still offer a good help in the knowledge diffusion’s mission. Indeed, the marketing do not have to control this mission but have to work for it. In that case, the marketing has to create the bases of a better understandability and appreciation from the public. And the optimistic version is that with time, the public starts to understand the values that explain why museums exist, the patrimony they are, the knowledge they share and the services they offers. And with this understandability, the public will well use the museums and will help it out if all their initiative.

. Second article: “Marketing de la visite culurelle et implication du public” Pierre Chazaud. (Cultural visit’s marketing and public’s implication)

Pierre Chazaud is a french sociologist; in this article, he wanted to warn the marketing’s workers about the public they will have to satisfate Indeed, in this paper he tries to understand how the person moves in a historical monument and how he organizes his visit. Beyond scenographic and signaletic aspects, it is important to know how the public establishes relations of space, time, and affects in a place which is not neutral at all. A suvery in several places of Charente-Maritime in France shows that an audio-guide is far more than a simple help for visiting as it contributes to the construction of a sensory and auditory point of view.

At first, we have to know that, the visit itself is an important part of the cultural consumption. That’s why, most of the cultural institutions used to use two different strategies to give to the visit a touristic and commercial dimension; one of them is to put the site or the exhibition to good use (by audio-guide for example). The other strategy is to make infrastructures around the site (shop, restaurant…) to take care about the tourist. That’s where the marketing is working well. By using a very sober and pure marketing, the visitor will can choice a place because of its fame, accessibility, shop… It’s basically the first service the visitor is expecting for. But we have to be careful by using annexes services too much because it can just drain the main interest of the site. That’s why, we have to find a balance by making the public interested to a better public’s implication without to risk to make the place’s interest disappear.

Most of people usually thinks the tourist just have three possible attitudes in a museum:

-public can just look and stay passive.

-public can be mind-awake, want to use his senses.

-public can be really interested, and want to think and learn about the exhibition.

The problem with this point of view is it skip the public’s emotion. That’s why Pierre Chazaud offer an other point of view about public attitude:

-visite proximal: following the circuit.

-visite pendulaire: walk right to left and left to right in the museum.

-visite globale: just watch without deep-looking.

-viste ponctuelle: the public come to see something specific and not the whole exhibition.

 

 

The marketing also have to care about these public’s expectation: looking for knowledge, need to feel in a human or societal History, need to be identified to an heritage, a region or a period, and marketing have to link these public’s expectation in their everyday life. But marketing have to remember the tourist is here to have a good time at first. So how to diffuse such this knowledge and to be entertaining ? There is some tips; first, just by linking the visit with a change of scene feeling, then give opportunity to buy a souvenir, to drink, eat and/or rest. And for the main visit, there is some tools, such as audio-guide. But even if using this kind of tools make the way more difficult to separate culture and communication, it can promote the site. For example, after using this audio-guide in a Charente-Maritime museum, the institution asked 200 people and 48% of them thinks this tool made them closest to the monument; also, 25% of them think it increases the visual emotion. Anyway, this kind of tool have to be safety used, because it can decrease the public’s focus in some case.

 

. Third article: “Le marketing du patrimoine: à contexte particulier, méthodologue particulière” Christine Petr. (Heritage’s marketing: special situation, special method)

Christine Petr is a french university’s teacher of marketing science, specialized on consumer marketing and comportment. She starts her article by saying the importance of the touristic sites self-financing in France to fill the budget, too often showing a deficit, by selling tickets and products in the site’s shop. For her, there is three different ways to making money:

-increase to the price of the tickets but it can be really risky because the consumer may choice to do not buy it at all if it’s too expensive.

-increase the number of consumer by advertising and communication.

-increase the number of people coming in the city/place where the museum is located.

After this, the marketing has in a first step to evaluate the market (potential), and in a second step, marketing has to specify the targets, to use a strategy from the three previous one. Anyway, to evaluate the market, Christine Petr warn us to make a difference between all the consumers, and the people coming in the site for the first time.

Then, like in the previous article, the most important is too find a balance between learning knowledge and entertaining.

My own opinion

This book was really interesting to read because, while I am studying History in France, I have to visit lot of museums and places to understand the sources better. Like I was a neophyte in cultural marketing, for me, this topic could make a link between the pure History research and the cultural marketing that is really helpful to promote the knowledge. Those articles was also interested because it was a good example of interdisciplinary, that is becoming really important in France to study History very well. By this way, those articles, and all the other research and lessons about cultural marketing and marketing gave me some tips to understand links.

From my own experience, I agree with the most part of those articles, especially about the really important balance between teaching knowledge and give some entertaining to the consumer. In that case, the marketing is the perfect and accurate weapon to keep museums and heritage alive now-days, because as soon as there is some people to keep it alive (thanks to the marketing), the knowledge continue to be offer to the people, that’s why I think it has to be a public service. Indeed, like the redactor said at the beginning of this topic, even if we talk about marketing (which sounds like money-maker), we have to estimate it because of the help it can offer to public service. Anyway, I also agree the marketing do not have to lead museums, but just give tools to make them entertaining, understandable, and interesting.

 

 

 

Cédric B.