Given that marketing is the process by which organisations generate audience interest, and here, engage communities with their services, it is something that a museum's management is obliged to address in the 21st Century. It is the management strategy that underlies the operation's development and legitimises it. It is an integrated process through which organisations build strong community relationships and creates value for their Communities of Ownership and Interest (COI).
Interestingly the QVMAG Search Conference was a three day affair attended by people who self selected to attend and were clearly members of the institution's COI. That they did so and collectively identified these two issues is not insignificant – even eight years on.
At the time non-residents were being charged a $10 entry fee, attendances were falling and the recurrent costs of the institution were rising – and have done since. Despite the outcomes of this conference and the Chamberlain Report that was commissioned by Council following the conference, and that advocated change for the QVMAG, the institution is in essence currently trying to address the same set of issues as before 2002 – albeit stimulated by a different set of circumstances.
Clearly this history has inhibited the effectiveness of the QVMAG's marketing. The 2002 Search Conference was in fact a demonstration of the levels of, the diversity of and the passionately asserted ownerships and interests people had invested in the institution. It was also a pointer to the unrealised outcomes and the missed opportunities the museum's governance, and consequently its marketing needs that are yet to be addressed as comprehensively in 2010 as it was identified that it needed to be in 2002. Ultimately this is a failure of governance.
1 comment:
I fear the QVMAG may have been following the sides of the Scabble dice rather than the top surface...
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