HBR: What Virals Ads can Tell Us About Engaging Visitors

Evian's Roller Babies commercial demonstrates what makes an ad go viral.

The March 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review focuses on U. S. business competitiveness in the world and won’t interest most readers of EngagingPlaces.net, however, there are a few smaller stories scattered around that are relevant. Thales Texiera’s article on “The New Science of Viral Ads” lays out five techniques that encourage people to watch and share their commercials (in other words, “go viral”) and I’ve modified three of them to address the needs of visitors at historic sites:

Play down the logo, play up the brand. If your logo is too dominant or intrusive, visitors will be turned off by this obvious attempt to manipulate them. A few places are fine and expected (e.g. letterhead, entrance sign, mugs in the store) but I’ve visited sites where a logo is on every sign, including the one pointing to the bathroom. It may make your board happy, but it’ll turn off your visitors. Instead, unobtrusively weave your brand (not logo) throughout the visitor experience. Texiera uses Coca-Cola’s “Happiness Factory” ad as an example (how was the Coca-Cola logo used?).
Create joy and surprise right away. Visitors stay engaged in large part if they encounter joy or surprise. So in tours, for example, add an element of joy or surprise into the introduction rather than saving it only for the conclusion. Each site will need to figure this out for themselves, but it can be a surprising fact or an earnest welcome. Bud Light’s “Swear Jar” ad is an example of delivering humor and surprise to maintain viewers’ interest (and just a warning, this ad may offend some people and because it promotes the drinking of alcohol, you’ll need to register as an adult on YouTube to view it).
Build an emotional roller coaster. Just as in a good novel, the rhythm or flow helps carry the visitor along and keeps them engaged with fresh twists and turns. Tours too often are presented as just one fact/object/room after another. Instead of building a tour solely on cognitive elements (e.g. facts, names, and dates), integrate some affective ones (e.g., humor, surprise, suspense, drama, fun)–just make sure it’s appropriate, authentic, and based on fact. Evian’s “Roller Babies” cuts between scenes for an emotional roller coaster of continual surprises. With more than 50 million views on YouTube, it’s a major hit.

For more, read Thales Texiera’s article on “The New Science of Viral Ads” online or watch the five-minute interview that accompanies the story.

More Than 300 Museum Supporters on Capitol Hill

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Congress was visited by more than 300 leaders in the museum field on Tuesday for the fourth annual Museums Advocacy Day. The day started with welcoming messages and packets of key issues, and then off we went for meetings with our senators and congressmen. The delegation from Maryland was huge with about two dozen people and met with staff for Senator Cardin and Senator Mikulski, who were very open to our requests to support funding for the Office of Museum Programs of the Institute of Museum and Library Services; including museums among the approved partners for schools in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and opposing elimination of the tax deductibility of charitable donations. Congressman Chris Van Hollen, who represents my district, was incredibly generous with his time and came out to talk with us between votes in the House chamber.

Meeting with my senators and congressman to talk about the value of museums was a great experience, although it’s unclear how much can be accomplished in this bitter election year. More eye opening were the hundreds of people who were also wandering the halls to advocate for their cause, so we’ve got lots of competition. If we don’t participate, others will step in and happily take our place.

Museums Advocacy Day is coordinated by the American Association of Museums, and anyone is welcome to participate.

Lodging in Historic Canal Houses Garners State Award

C & O Canal National Historical Park in Maryland

The Maryland Historical Trust, the state agency that preserves and interprets Maryland’s history, recently presented an Outstanding Stewardship award to the National Park Service and the C & O Canal Trust for its Canal Quarters Program, which allows the public to stay overnight in many of the historic lock houses adjacent to the towpath. NPS acquired the 184-mile long Chesapeake and Ohio Canal with 1,300 historic structures, and figuring out what to do with all of them has been a challenge for decades. Partnering with the nonprofit C & O Canal Trust, NPS developed a new model for adaptive reuse that allows visitors to stay overnight while traveling along the canal. Although the buildings are among the park’s primary historic “artifacts”, many were vacant and only served as “scene setters” for the park’s four million annual visitors. The resulting program not only preserves the buildings, but also allows them to be used in a way that creates a memorable experience for visitors (and probably earns some new revenue!). Congratulations on a fine idea and getting it implemented despite the bureaucracy of the federal government!

Learn more at “Maryland Historical Trust honors program offering lodging in C&O Canal lock houses” in the Washington Post (February 27, 2012).

What the Latest Trends in Mobile Tech Mean for Historic Sites

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, recently released its 2012 Mobile Future in Focus report. This annual report examines the use of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) in 2011 in the United States, Canada, and overseas (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Japan). According to Mark Donovan, comScore Senior Vice President of Mobile:

2011 proved to be a groundbreaking year for the mobile industry, with smartphones hitting the mainstream, tablets emerging as a formidable fourth screen, and consumers increasingly integrating mobile behaviors into their lifestyles. As the industry continues to innovate and more consumers look to multiple devices and platforms to consume digital media, we expect the mobile and connected device landscape to be shaken up even further in 2012. As mobile channels present a more personal, social, and ubiquitous experience to consumers, advertisers and publishers have an opportunity to better engage target audiences, given an understanding of how to connect and leverage the unique characteristics of these emerging platforms.

For history organizations and historic sites, some of the findings you’ll find most applicable are:

Smartphones Gain Adoption Among ‘Early Majority’, Driving Mobile Media Consumption. “Nearly 42 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers now use smartphones, along with 44.0 percent of mobile users across the EU5 (comprised of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK). Mobile media use – defined as browsing the mobile web, accessing applications, or downloading content – saw increased growth as a result, surpassing the 50-percent threshold in many markets, supported by the proliferation of high-speed networks and increased public WiFi availability.” Nearly half of cell phone users have internet access, so ensure your website is maintained and up-to-date because increasing numbers of people will be using the smartphones to make decisions as they travel. What we don’t know is how popular smartphones are among visitors to historic sites and history museums–that may be something to explore at your site (just ask!).
Mobile Retail Information Leads to Emergence of Smartphone Shopping Behaviors. “More than half of the U.S. smartphone population used their phone to perform retail research while inside a store in 2011, illustrating the emergence of savvy smartphone shoppers who bring online shopping behaviors in-store – a trend seen in other markets as well. At the end of 2011, nearly 1 in 5 smartphone users scanned product barcodes and nearly 1 in 8 compared prices on their phone while in a store.” You may discover that visitors are looking at their phones when they are in your store. They could be evaluating your products, comparing prices, or making a purchase (“this is a great book, let me order it on Amazon.com so I don’t have to carry it with me now”). Your little museum store has just become part of the global marketplace so you’ll need to increasingly think about what’s distinctive, unique, or better than your competitors around the world and may have to change your inventory in response. And I bet that visitors will be doing the same comparison soon as they choose among the many things to do in your community (“hmm, should we go to an historic site, a winery, or downtown? Let’s see what Yelp recommends.”).
Mobile Devices Fuel Social Networking On-The-Go, Driving Real-Time Online Interaction. “64.2 million U.S. smartphone users and 48.4 million EU5 smartphone users accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices at least once in December 2011, with more than half of these mobile social networking users accessing social media almost every day. While mobile social networking users showed the highest propensity to read posts from people they knew personally, more than half of those in the U.S. and nearly half in the EU5 also reported reading posts from brands, organizations, and events.” With so many people using social media such as Facebook, Google+, Flickr, Yelp, and Foursquare, remind them to share their experiences of your site (at the end of the tour, remind visitors to share their visit on Facebook and Yelp). You’ll slowly build a reputation. And if you haven’t already, be sure to create and maintain a page in Facebook, Google+, Flickr, Yelp, or Foursquare.
Mobile Connectivity and Connected Devices Encourage Cross-Platform Digital Media Consumption among ‘Digital Omnivores’. “Tablets quickly rose in popularity in 2011, taking less than two years to account for nearly 40 million tablets in use among U.S. mobile users and outpacing smartphones which took 7 years to reach the same. By the end of 2011, nearly 15 percent of U.S. mobile users also had tablets – a trend seen across other markets as well.” Tablets are quickly becoming a common technology along with smartphones and laptop computers. That won’t affect historic sites very much as long as you keep your website and apps up to date (see below), but it may open up a new opportunity for producing unique digital guides or visitor experiences through Kindle or iBooks. Apps, e-books, or websites designed for tablets may soon replace or supplement portable DVDs, podcasts, and audioguides.

Thinking about developing an app?

Smartphone Platform Wars Intensify As Android and Apple Take the Lead in Most Markets. “The Google Android and Apple iOS smartphone platforms emerged as the leaders of the U.S. smartphone market in 2011, with Android just a few points shy of capturing half of the smartphone market and iOS accounting for nearly 30 percent of the market. In the EU5, Android saw similarly significant gains, unseating market leader Symbian in 3 out of the 5 European markets measured.” If you are developing an app, sorry, you’ll still need to develop it for both Android and Apple iOS.
Surge in Mobile App Usage Shapes a Dual Mobile Browsing Experience, Fueling Category Growth. “In 2011, both the U.S. and EU5 saw the growth in mobile app use exceed the growth in mobile browser use, leading to both markets seeing the same percentage of their mobile audience use both apps and browsers to access mobile media. Health ranked as the fastest-growing mobile media category in the U.S. in 2011, followed by Retail and other commerce-related categories such as Electronic Payments and Auction Sites.” The use of apps has grown this past year and it looks like it’s caught up to mobile browser use–smartphone owners are using apps and internet browsers at the same rate (if these distinctions are confusing, check out the explanation at the New Media Campaigns blog). And if you aren’t thinking about online sales and payments, start now or risk losing revenue (check out PayPal and Google Checkout and see if they still have special rates for non-profits).

For more details, download a free copy of 2012 Mobile Future in Focus report.

Mothballing a Site Can Be Worse than Staying Open

The California State Parks system has been teetering on the edge of closure for the past few years due to the economic paralysis that has gripped the state’s government. The situation is so bad that the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the entire system–nearly 300 sites–to their 11 Most Endangered List in 2008. The downward spiral continues and the state has now begun mothballing sites with disastrous results. The recent victim is Mitchell Caverns, which was recently vandalized when the site was closed and abandoned. According to the Los Angeles Times:

Intruders cut fences, kicked doors off of hinges and shattered windows and display cases. They stole metal signs and survival gear, including hand-held radios, flashlights and binoculars. They also stole diesel-powered generators and ripped out thousands of feet of electrical wire used to illuminate the only natural limestone caverns in the state park system, San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators said.

This may not bode well for the state’s plan to shut 70 more sites in July–that’s 25 percent of the parks. Perhaps it would be better to lease or sell these sites with easements rather than see them vandalized and destroyed. For the more on this story, see “Shuttered California State Parks may be Vulnerable to Vandalism” by Louis Sahagun in the Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2012.

College History Degree is Getting A Tune Up; Historic Sites Get a Flat Tire IMHO

The American Historical Association recently announced that it is initiating a nationwide, faculty-led project to articulate the disciplinary core of historical study and to define what a student should know and be able to do at the completion of a history degree program. Professors Anne Hyde (Colorado College) and Patricia Limerick (University of Colorado Boulder) will lead faculty from more than sixty colleges and universities across the country to frame common goals and reference points for post-secondary history education. According to the AHA, “these faculty participants will work together to develop common language that communicates to a broad audience the significance and value of a history degree.”

Hmm, just the degree? What about the significance and value of history? My sense is that this project is being prompted by the funder, Continue reading →

Webinar on Strategies for Financially Sustaining Historic Buildings

The California Preservation Foundation, a statewide historic preservation organization, has been offering a series of lunchtime webinars (well, lunchtime on the West Coast) on a variety of topics that would interest staff and volunteers who work with historic sites, including window restoration, fundraising, architectural styles, historic landscapes, and tax credits.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 12 noon Pacific time, I’ll be sharing a webinar with Jim Newland of California State Parks on building a stable financial foundation for historic sites by rethinking Continue reading →

Changes Rumored for IMLS Grants

I recently heard a rumor that the Institute of Museum and Library Services made significant changes to their grant programs for museums on February 13, 2012 including:

All grant programs will have the same deadline: January 15. This will require organizations to have sufficient capacity to prepare several applications at one time during the busy holiday and year end season.
Conservation grants are now part of the broader Museums for America (MFA) grant program. Organizations can no longer apply for separate conservation and MFA grants–they have to choose one.
21st Century Museum Professionals and National Leadership Grants have been combined. Applicants (particularly museum associations) will now have to choose one and can’t do both.

It seems the public and museum field had no opportunity to comment on these changes, however, some of the additional issues that have been raised are:

With this consolidation, it reduces the number of grants available to the museum field. It is particularly vexing when Continue reading →

Why We Have Curators and Collections Managers

Times are tough and many museums and historic sites wonder about the value of keeping curators and collections managers on the payroll. What do they do besides sit in their offices all day? Well, boardmembers and CEOs, they keep an eye on your most valuable assets. The University of California Berkeley, that fine institution of learning, provides a useful lesson on what happens when you don’t have curators or collections managers involved in managing your artifacts. According to the New York Times:

Everybody misplaces something sometime. But it is not easy for the University of California, Berkeley, to explain how it lost a 22-foot-long carved panel by a celebrated African-American sculptor, or how, three years ago, it mistakenly sold this work, valued at more than a million dollars, for $150 plus tax. The university’s embarrassing loss eventually enabled the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, a large museum and research center in San Marino, Calif., to acquire its first major work by an African-American artist.

Fortunately, there’s a happy ending to this tale for the object, the artist, and the museum–but the university has egg on its face. First, for not recognizing and properly caring for a significant work of art and secondly for disposing of it for so little money. I’m not surprised. Most colleges and universities are notorious for treating their historic sites and museum collections poorly (have we forgotten about the University of Southern California’s long mistreatment of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House or Cal Poly Pomona’s neglect of Richard Neutra’s VDL House?).

For the complete story, see “Berkeley’s Artwork Loss Is a Museum’s Gain” by Carol Pogash in the New York Times (February 20, 2012) and Huntington Library Acquires Sargent Johnson Monumental Depression-Era Sculpture in Black Artist News (June 22, 2011).