Museums See Advertising in New Light

The $1-million Museum of Contemporary Art campaign unfolding in Southern California illustrates a trend among museums: spotlighting permanent collections instead of using their limited budgets to showcase special exhibitions.

MOCA’s ads are going to places no local museum has gone before: a billboard perched atop a strip joint, coffee cup sleeves, gas pump handles, even coat hangers carrying dry-cleaned clothing.

“At their worst, museums across the country might have had this attitude of ‘Those who need to know about us can find their way,’ ” said MOCA Director Jeremy Strick. “But our new campaign is about putting the museum in parts of the world where it might not have been before.”

Traditional advertising, which has been driven by special events, “is great when you’ve got big exhibitions running back to back,” said Arthur Cohen, whose New York-based advertising agency develops campaigns for such institutions as the National Gallery of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “But when the blockbuster is gone, you need to look at what’s compelling on an ongoing, consistent basis.”

Museums began dusting off their advertising plans during the 1990s as the flow of federal funding for arts programs slowed. Many museum executives realized that their marketing programs weren’t shining a very bright light on their institutions.

“Contemporary art has to do with the world around us, it’s about seeing the world in a new way,” Strick said. “In the media campaign, where the campaign occurs is an integral part of the message we want to send.”

Museum boards of directors talk about creating public awareness and polishing their institutional image--processes marketers describe as brand building. Most museum executives aren’t comfortable embracing the advertising industry lexicon.

“I’m careful about using the word ‘branding,’ ” said Maxwell L. Anderson, director of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. “I don’t use it unless I have to. It’s obviously appropriate to use in the private sector, but it raises concerns in the nonprofit world.”

Museums in smaller cities often can bask in the media spotlight, but that’s not the case in big cities, where consumers are awash in competing cultural opportunities.

“Los Angeles is a place where there are so many options for consumers that you have to have a continuing presence,” said John Cooke, a former Walt Disney Co. executive who late last year joined the J. Paul Getty Trust as executive vice president of external affairs.

The American Assn. of Museums’ annual meetings include panel discussions on such topics as “Hitting Home: Targeting Your Audience with Direct Mail” and “Marketing 101: Clueless in the Marketing World.”

Museums are scrutinizing their roles “in much the same way a corporation would,” said Cohen, a principal with LaPlaca Cohen Advertising. “They won’t use these words, but they’re identifying their brand equity and trying to clarify their market position.”

Before making a pitch, museums have to determine who is likely to listen. The task facing Mark Thie in 1997 when he became the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s first marketing manager was “finding out how who our visitor was and how we were perceived.”

Museums generally decline to talk about advertising budgets. But advertising executives say art museums spend considerably less in a year than a Hollywood production company might spend on promoting a movie for an Oscar.

MOCA set the groundwork for its new campaign in 1999, just as Strick was coming on board. “There was extensive discussion on the board and among staff about whether MOCA should be doing more to put itself in the public eye,” Strick said.

MOCA stepped into the spotlight last year when it hired Santa Monica-based TBWA/Chiat/Day, the high-profile advertising agency that created the Energizer Bunny, Taco Bell’s smirking Chihuahua and the quirky sock puppet for the now-failed Pets.com.

“Chiat/Day has a reputation as one of the most innovative and creative firms in the advertising field,” Strick said. “MOCA has position as a leading museum of contemporary art--for being out front with the most creative and innovative work. So there’s a natural affinity there.”

There’s also a danger that advertising won’t serve the art it’s designed to promote.

“One of the many things we do, something that’s our stock-in-trade, is challenge boundaries and assumptions,” Strick said. “That said, one of the primary directives Chiat/Day had to take to heart was to respect the work we show here. They had to understand that this is an art museum, that we can’t do things that would give the wrong impression.”

Chiat/Day copywriter Maya Rao and art director Moe Verbrugge saw their challenge as creating advertising that is as unconventional as the art displayed in the downtown L.A. museum. They opted against incorporating art into the advertisements, instead turning to the ubiquitous black-and-white museum labels.

Chiat/Day’s advertisements--including billboards, newspaper ads and television and radio spots--offer tongue-in-cheek descriptions of everyday life. The ads, including a billboard near the Crazy Girls strip club in Los Angeles, are designed to make passersby pause. The ad copy for “Nudes 2001” reads:

Bodies, dimensions variable

A study of First Amendment

rights, entertainment and business

all acting in concert to provide a debate among lawyers,

politicians and the general public.

On loan from The Museum of

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Similarly wry billboards are stationed near a well-known church in Hollywood, a public golf course and at busy intersections.

When the Whitney’s Anderson was director of a museum at Atlanta’s Emory University in the 1990s, he used billboards to advertise the collection. One ad used the caption “Dixie Cup, 550 BC” to describe the accompanying picture of a rare Greek drinking cup. “The ads created buzz,” Anderson said.

The Getty used humor in ads created by the Santa Monica-based Rubin Postaer Associates advertising agency. “Long before the scooter craze, the gift of choice was an illuminated manuscript,” reads the text on a Getty ad featuring an AD 1240 painting.

Humor also is evident in ads addressing the perception that the museum isn’t easily accessible. “Coming here this weekend is as easy as heading up the 405,” the ad states. “But don’t let that discourage you.”

“We are telling people that we’re part of this community and region,” Cooke said. “We want people to know this is their institution--that we’re not elitist in any way in our activities and interests.”

As they venture further into Madison Avenue territory, museum caretakers recognize the danger of promoting art as if it were laundry detergent or beer.

“The primary obligation I have is to the artists I serve,” Anderson said. “If you get too caught up in the commercial paradigm, you risk losing out. If you get too caught up in attendance as the primary barometer of your health, the tail is wagging the dog.”

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Getting the Word Out

More museums across the country are turning to advertising to lure visitors.

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Estimated annual visitors, in millions, at U.S. museums*

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Art museums: 225

Children’s art museums: 112

Youth museums: 22

Science and technology museums: 116

Botanical gardens and arboretums: 77

Zoos and aquariums: 120

Natural history museums: 28

History museums/historical sites, adults: 69

History museums/historical sites, children: 48

Repeat visits: 48

* 1997 data (most recent available)

Source: American Assn. of Museums