(Barcelona, Spain) - Acoustiguide President and CEO Barbara Roberts outlined methods for successful museum marketing with audio programming at the International Council of Museums conference in Barcelona this summer. Roberts spoke at the invitation of ICOM's marketing and public relations committee to an audience of museum marketing professionals from around the world.
Taking as her topic "The Experiential Museum," Roberts advocated for educational programs that connect with visitors on an emotional level. This type of learning goes beyond merely absorbing information and can change visitors' awareness of the world.
"Cultural institutions that began as resources for scholars and the educated elite must now accept their popular appeal and the social aspect of today's museum outings," Roberts said. "How can we give visitors an encounter with emotion, enjoyment and fun, and leave them with a sense of wonder about what they've seen and heard?"
Towards this goal, Roberts presented methods for successful museum marketing with audio programming:
Make a clear, consistent statement of a museum's mission. Audio tours provide a way to consistently express a personal message from the museum director and directly connect with visitors.
Know your audience. Audio programs are increasingly offered for children, adults, foreign-language visitors and the sight-impaired. If museums gather facts about the demographics of their visitors, they can consciously design programs for each audience.
Customize the message to each audience. With current technology, programs for each audience can be housed on separate tracks on the same audio player.
Seek an emotional connection. Live interviews with curators and experts, ambient sound, period music, poems and dramatizations bring objects and history to life. People learn and remember best what personally touches them.
Recognize that people learn three ways. Educational research tells us that people learn by looking, listening and physically interacting. Adding audio components to exhibitions significantly adds to what people learn.
Recognize the importance of social interaction. Part of building an emotional connection is encouraging conversation with others. Wand equipment without headphones encourages interaction between visitors.
Extend the museum experience. With bookmarking on digital audio players, information can be uploaded to web sites. Visitors can "relive" their tours on the web after their visits.
Constructing an integrated experience takes money. Corporate sponsorship for audio tours is widely available. Acoustiguide equipment has a specially designed LCD screen and other space for displaying logos of corporate sponsors. This feature has helped museums raise significant sponsorship.
About Acoustiguide
Acoustiguide invented the audio tour more than 40 years ago, and the company has remained at the leading edge of creativity and technology ever since. Acoustiguide provides audio programs for museums, heritage and historic sites, tourism attractions, zoos, aquariums and corporate clients in 22 countries around the world. Acoustiguide offers complete creative and production services, the most advanced audio technology and comprehensive on-site management.
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