ICMM CONGRESS 2007

Maritime Museums - Reaching New Audiences

8-12 October 2007
MALTA

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A summary of all papers and speakers' biographies is contained within the programme*.

A selection of papers presented:

Keynote Address - A Future for Maritime Museums * Sir Neil Cossons, UK

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The MarMuCommerce Project
Three years ago Deutches Schiffahrtsmuseum, Maritime Museum of Barcelona, Musée Portuaire of Dunkerque and the Polish Maritime Museum in cooperation with University of Portsmouth, Centre for Logistics and Maritime Services (Technical University of Catalonia) and Studio di Consulenza per l’Unione Europea and coordinated by Iker Consulting, commenced a Project named “MarMuCommerce” (Maritime Regions: Making Museums Commercially Competitive).
MarMuCommerce partners shared a common challenge: Public heritage institutions are increasingly asked to contribute self-generated income to their budget. MarMuCommerce aimed to bridge this gap by creating a business model that introduced commercial marketing techniques and tools to public institutions. www.marmucommerce.com

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THE NAVAL AND MARITIME MUSEUM, VALPARAISO CHILE
Affording a spectacular view of the city’s bay and harbour, the Naval and Maritime Museum is located high above the harbour and city of Valparaiso in Chile.
The museum’s mission is to preserve the collections in custody and promote the Chilean naval and maritime heritage, so as to increase national sea awareness.  Our goal is to become the country’s most important reference in naval and maritime history. 
MUSEO NAVAL Y MARÍTIMO,  Paseo 21 de Mayo Nº 45, Cerro Artillería, Valparaíso, Chilewww.museonaval.cl

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Getting the Message Across – MEDIA
Bill Richards of the Australian National Maritime Museum looked at the nature of news, at the media industry, and particularly at the so-called ‘new media’.

… To achieve maximum benefit from the media, we museums must develop good solid working relationships with individuals within the media.  What’s needed in these relationships is personal contact, mutual understanding of needs and a large degree of trust in one another.

Museums do indeed make news.  And most of the news we make is good news. Most museum stories that make it into the media promote our objectives...  substantiate our status...  increase our credibility... and indeed encourage people through our turnstiles.

It’s difficult to put a dollar value on the so-called free publicity we gain in the news media, but some people try.  A few years ago I employed a specialist to look back and put a dollar value on the media exposure we gained in one particular twelve months.

He measured all the media stories, calculated their value as if they were paid advertisements and then multiplied that value by two... on the basis that the public places twice as much faith in editorial content as it does in advertising. 
He eventually reported that our 815 media stories that year were worth 5.2 million Australian dollars at today's rates or, if you like, some 3.3 million Euros.
I should mention ours is a  reasonably big museum.  We have a staff of around 140 and we welcome about 400,000 visitors through our doors a year

Even if our consultant was one million Euros out in his calculations – one way or another – his report clearly demonstrated the importance of getting our stories into the news media.

So… how do you get the attention of journalists, so that they write about your museum rather than something else on any particular day?  What makes a good story?

Books have been written about this. 

A lot will always depend on a complex phenomenon known as journalistic ‘news sense’. It will depend, too, on your own sense of opportunism. And inevitably it will depend, to an extent, on luck… 

But there are, as well, some reasonably solid principles to bear in mind

The truth is,  journalists… almost by definition… always look for something new.  Tell them you’ve got a great new exhibition coming up, and watch their eyes glaze over… 

To their way of thinking, we’ve always got a great new exhibition coming up.

Tell a mainstream journalist however that you’ve got SOMETHING OTHER THAN a great new exhibition coming up, and their eyes sparkle again, and  their ears prick up. 

So, my first piece of advice on publicity is… keep looking for stories around the outer
PERIMETER of your activities…

And an interesting thing is, when you deliberately look you’ll generally find one.

It might be something simple… like the personal maritime story of one of your volunteer guides…  or a controversial speaker who is going to address your museum members... or it might be your new method for scraping barnacles…  or how you clean a submarine – this was a beauty that yielded up a good half-page feature article in the Sydney Morning Herald  recently ...

… The internet gives you almost complete control over the stream of information into your house and your life.

In the ‘old media’, much of that control was – and still is – exercised by editors, programmers and other media executives who decide what you will read, what you will watch and hear.  And when you will read it, watch it or hear it.

The ‘new media’ are mostly inter-active. 

The former consumer of news is now able to  ‘chat’ online with a high-profile author of a news story, and sometimes even chat with the subject of the story.
He also has, at his fingertips, the technology to participate in the processes of gathering and distributing news.  And he has the opportunity to put his own point of view out there, using a blog or some other similar device, and chat with whomever turns up and responds to what he’s said. 

This way, of course, the ‘new media’ consumer is likely to build up a network of like-minded souls who rub along in a friendly way, chatting on this subject and that… and enjoying each other’s company more and more as time goes on.

So the ‘new media’ gives you what information you want, when you want... It has overlays of sociability and it even encourages creativity. 

The ‘old media’  have further problems...  For revenue, the 'old media" have traditionally relied on the support of mass markets: large newspaper readerships, radio audiences and television audiences.

The internet's 'new media' however are effectively smashing up those traditional mass markets.

The internet gives us the ability to select news and information according to our own particular interests… whether they happen to be left-wing politics, right-wing politics, safe food for school tuckshops, the hobbling Wallabies or a combination of some or all of these things. 

… The major newspapers and electronic media, as you probably know, are creating digital versions of themselves, and a lot of these are up, running and competing for attention on the internet.

To my mind, these new digital newspapers are quite brilliant.  They can break news instantaneously where paper newspapers are generally published only once in every 24 hours.

What’s more, digital newspapers carry video footage… so you can see not only photographs but motion pictures with news stories… fantastic!

These online newspapers, I think, point the way to the future. 

What does all this mean to us people in maritime museums, who simply want to get our stories out into the community so that people know who we are and what we’re doing?

I’d say it’s a matter of keeping it steady as she goes. We do need to keep a weather eye on the changing conditions and trim the sails accordingly… but there’s no need to panic and change our course dramatically from what we’re already doing.
The ‘old media’ are still powerful.  For our purposes, they still communicate directly with vast numbers of people interested in us and our activities.

What’s more, our good contacts in the ‘old media’ are in the best position to tell us how the media are being reshaped.  They’re involved in it up to their necks.  They are adapting to the new media, and they have good advice on what opportunities exist for us. 

A  reiteration of my main theme....  

We museums will do well in the media so long as we work to develop good, trusting respectful relationships with the media professionals.

And that will hold true whatever media channels they’re working in – press, radio, television or the internet’s ‘new media.’

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See also Congress reports in the ICMM Newsletter *

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