Archive for the ‘Your stories’ Category

Radio New Zealand has received accolades (and lots of visits) for their use of podcasts on their website. It’s certainly worth a look – all your favourite shows are on the site as downloadable podcasts for your MP3 or computer. There’s also plenty of options for listening ‘on demand’ (clicking on a link to hear audio). Visitors have listened to around 4,000 ‘on demand’ audio items.

Richard Hulse and Mark Cubey from RNZ tell me that they are building audiences by making content more accessible – content that listeners may not hear if their personal listening schedule does not coincide with programming timetables. Richard told me about a university student who said he wouldn’t be seen dead listening to the station, but who downloads podcasts and tells his friends about them.

Other initiatives on the website include a blog from Todd Niall at the Amercia’s cup. Over in Valencia, Todd writes content, records audio, takes photos and uploads material to the website. I also really like the photos on the website of kiwis enjoying their national radio station (like the one with this post). A simple way to involve users in the website as well as imparting a strong impression that RNZ is our radio station.

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TheNewDowse art gallery re-opened in February after major works that have improved and expanded their exhibition spaces in their Lower Hutt building.

I’ve really enjoyed their re-launch campaign, featuring a blistering pink on posters and balloons. The slogan ‘TheNewDowse is the *!’ invites you to make up your own mind. Nice one!

I took a photo of this poster on the edge of Wellington’s central business district. Is this the first ever campaign that’s compatible with graffiti? (The graffiti is the black squiggle in the bottom right hand corner.) Perhaps not what TheNewDowse intended - but it doesn’t look out of place.

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Further to the Aigantighe’s examples of how museums can interact with their audiences, the Auckland Museum has been running a popular tour ‘Night at the Auckland Museum’.

Loosely connected to the movie ‘Night at the Museum’ (children on the tour receive a free ticket to the movie), a museum security guard turns out the lights and guides children and parents around the exhibits, which come alive … The tour runs three times on Tuesdays to Saturdays until the end of April.

A great example of ‘hooking’ an audience, and hopefully the quality of the experience itself provides the ‘anchor’ that engages children and parents and gets them returning to the museum on other occasions.

Another bonus - for both organisations, these innovations have resulted in positive media coverage in newspapers.

Does anyone have other stories of initiatives that have built audiences and even increased the number of return visitors? How have you gone about measuring this?

The Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru has scored two international marketing triumphs - an article in the Feburary 2007 edition of Museums Journal and mention on the home page of Global Museum webzine (check it out before the page changes).

How have they done it? Dr Fiona Ciaran, Director of the Aigantighe Art Gallery, says the article in Museums Journal happened because the journal heard about the innovations at the art museum.

Chen, the living Ming Dynasty sculpture - a human made up like a sculpture in the art museum’s collection - comes alive to interact with visitors and has connected especially well with children.

Activities, such dressing up in the costumes depicted in paintings, means children are dragging their sometime-reluctant parents to Aigantighe.

A sense of humour embodies this museum’s approach. ‘Museums are temples of curiosity: if you’re not having fun with your public, you’re failing to inspire them’, Fiona says. However, having fun is a serious business - the museum wants to get people through the door by making their museum approachable, their audience comfortable and ultimately engaged with the art.

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