Marketing the Gardner Museum

There was a fun article in the Boston Globe the other day on a novel attempt to market the Gardner Museum. For those not familiar with “Mrs. Jack” or her Museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner was a late 19th/early 20th century Boston grande dame who, with her husband, traveled extensively - and collected all sorts of art work and artifacts on her travels.

With stuff bulging out of her own house, she decided to create a museum, which she did by building an Italianate palazzo in the Fenway area of Boston - and stuffing it with her treasures, including my favorite piece: the ornate sedan chair that belonged to the Duke of Gloucester (or someone like that) in the 16th/17th century (or thereabouts).

The Museum is a wonder of beauty and eccentricity. (One of the best things about it is the indoor garden, which gets changed out seasonally and is just magnificent to behold. This picture does it no justice whatsoever.)

It seems that the Gardner Museum is now using “street teams” - twenty-somethings - to distribute postcards to other twenty-somethings in hopes of stirring up interest in a demographic that, unless they went to school nearby to the Fens, may not have ever heard of it.

We’re used to “street teams” - they’re in Boston all the time handing out flyers about clothing or shoe sales, or free samples. (Last year I got a free sample of some nasty-tasting Coca Cola Black. Last week I got some flavored water from Snapple, I think. It’s in the fridge. I haven’t tried it yet.)

..there are some clear signs that the effort has made an impact. The key event the street teamers promote, “After Hours,” a monthly gathering designed to draw young professionals into the Gardner, has been packed, the palace reaching its 500-person capacity. Also, in exit surveys, more than 56 percent of “After Hours” guests said they had heard of the new program through word of mouth. Museum officials believe the street-team work contributes to that.

Cultural marketers like the Gardner’s approach to wooing a younger demographic:

“What’s cool . . . is it sounds like kind of a hybrid of viral marketing and old-school ‘get out the vote’ stuff,” said Arthur Cohen, whose New York-based cultural marketing firm has done work for, among others, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “Once people know they’re not being sold something commercial, they’re much more open to an offer like that. It’s less shilling and more spreading a good word.”

This is marketing on the cheap, and it’s fun and imaginative - a great way to augment us graying museum-goers with some younger folks who just might fall in love with (or at) the Gardner.

---

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.

The Opinionated Marketers | Powered by WordPress | ElegantBlue is a custom theme by Nathan Rice