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Brand Experience with Tate Modern

Jonas Babics Birkbeck College, University of London

Talking about brands most people will think of commercial brands. The majority of the brands also do represent companies or commercial products, but the very successful tools of branding are more and more also used by art institutions, sport clubs, educational organisations, charities or even countries and cities. I am personally very interested in the cooperation between business and culture or business and art. There is a lot of potential, where these two fields can complement or learn from each other. Companies found and explored various ways to sell their products and services to people and therefore increase their profits. Although, cultural organisations might not have profit as their primary objective, they can and should also use marketing and strategy practices created by companies to make their own products and services more accessible and more popular for their audience. Cultural organisations need to satisfy their consumers as well, at the same time also public policy makers and funding institutions and they are in competition with other cultural organisations as well as different leisure time activities. Tate Modern is a prime example of a cultural institution, which built up a very successful brand. The museum for international modern and contemporary art at Bankside in London is probably one of the first museums to use branding tools so thoroughly and hence became very popular. Tate Modern is also one of my favourite places in one of my favourite cities in the world. Therefore, I chose to make myself on a brand experience journey with Tate Modern. The objective of this journey is to find out why I am so attracted by Tate Modern and get never bored of visiting the museum and to draw conclusion for other cultural brands. As Wally Ollins, a brand expert and author of different books about branding, states we can expect many non- commercial organisations to use branding techniques, because branding works (Ollins, 2003). With this report I want to make recommendations for other cultural brands of how they can learn from Tate Modern. This brand experience journey took place over the time period of 5 weeks and I followed it with blog posts on my existing blog red bulb, where I write comments and stories about the creative industries (red bulb, 2012).

Following a Journey with a Brand Although, I knew Tate Modern already very well because I visit the museum regularly, I thought the only way to find out more about my relationship to the Tate Modern brand and to experience it properly, I should visit the museum regularly. Therefore, I went almost every weekend to Bankside and chose a topic to focus on. These topics are also the topics of the blog posts on red bulb and I wrote one after every visit. The objective of these visits was to find out why I enjoy it so much to go to Tate Modern and what attracts me. I wanted to go deeper into my feelings to see what the consumption of Tate Modern actually triggers in me. Furthermore, I wanted to observe people what they do in the museum, why they might have gone there and what they would tell their friends about it afterwards. During these visits I realised that the benefits I gain from being at Tate Modern are on a very personal and emotional level. It does not fulfill a physical need, I cannot wear it or use it in daily life, but the brand helps me to find out more about and create my own identity. Therefore, I connected my own experience with existing theory and will reflect these theories in this report. The focus will lie on consumer behaviour and the self and what a brand can trigger in people. Tate Modern - a Cultural Brand Tate Modern is the most popular museum for modern and contemporary art in the world and also one of the most visited tourist attractions in London (Tate, 2001). Tate Modern is part of Tate, a family of four galleries and a public institution. Tate's mission is to promote the publics knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of British art from the sixteenth century to the present day and of international modern and contemporary art. (Tate, 2008:1). Tate Modern is located on the south bank of the river Thames in London and is connected to St Pauls Cathedral on the north bank with the Millenium Bridge, a pedestrian bridge. The building of Tate Modern is an old power station, which was converted into the museum by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The location is very prominent and accessible from the bridge or from both sides along the river, which are all very beautiful walks in London. Tate Modern is not only a museum, Tate Modern is a very successful brand. A brand can be described as a sign, or also a set of signs that refers to the value universe of a commodity and is capable of distinguishing the products or services of an organisation (Askeegard, 2006; Riezebos, 2003). Branding is not only logo design, how it is understood by many marketers. Branding includes the whole world created to give a company or a product a personality and at the end of course to make the products and services more attractive for the customers to consume. Brands can give products and services a meaning.

When I talk about Tate Modern being a cultural brand I do not refer to the concept of cultural branding described by Holt (2004) who writes about brands that became cultural icons with performing identity myths. In this report the cultural brand stands for a brand of an organisation in the cultural industries. The term cultural can also have different meanings and therefore be misunderstood. I do not refer to culture in a sense of common beliefs shared by a group of people or a society, but rather as creative activities that contribute to the intellectual and artistic development as described by Galloway and Dunlop (2007). Tate Modern has all the characteristics, which constitute a successful brand: a high quality and demanded product, a very distinct and well recognisable logo design, worldwide reputation, a superb location and it is regularly covered in the media. The museum managed to attract people from all over the world and from different social backgrounds. Museums sometimes can have rather elitist characteristics and people behave in there as if they are in a church. Young people very often describe museums as boring and as a duty if they visit one with their school. However, Tate Modern is constantly full of visitors and very different kind of visitors. You might see the usual culturally interested people in there, but also groups of young people, school classes on their trip to London and families. Visitors feel very comfortable around the paintings and sculptures and although still nobody touches the art objects, you can go very close to them and get a real connection. The art in Tate Modern is not exhibited as they were in a sacred place, but rather like in a living room. Visiting museums has a high significance in western cultures. Art exhibitions are part of the education. I told one of my friends, who is from India about my brand experience journey with Tate Modern. He told me that in India people do not go to museums and that it is something very uncommon. He himself has never been to Tate Modern so I motivated him to visit. He followed my advice and was very enthusiastic after he went there, a reaction I could observe from many people. Nobody ever told me Tate Modern is boring. Tate Modern and The Self On one of my visits to Tate Modern I asked myself why I have to go there every week. I could also have written my blog posts at home and draw from my memories. However, when I entered the building I knew that there is no better place to write than in Tate Modern itself. As soon as you come into the old power station, you enter a world on its own. The place is so full of creativity that it is very inspiring to you as a visitor. While my thoughts are able to settle down when I am in Tate Modern, at the same time my mind sets free. I am able to think about new ideas of what I could reach in life and see all the opportunities, which are open to me. The combination of the large Turbine Hall, the very bright and open gallery spaces and of course the

paintings and sculptures gives me the feeling that everything is possible and that the world is open to me. In Tate Modern I feel very much free. The fact that Tate Modern can have this impact on me must have to do with my own personality. Art was always very important in my family and I grew up with art around me and visited galleries or looked at art books when I was a child. As a teenager and in my early twenties I rather distanced myself from the creative world and was more interested in business. Does Tate Modern help me to find back to or maybe shape a new identity? Elliott and Wattanasuwan (1998) suggest that brands can help us in the construction of identity with serving as symbolic resources. These resources might be used to achieve an ego ideal and if consumers have the choice they choose things that have a particular symbolic meaning. With products this might be very obvious, since we can use products and let their meaning speak for itself. With the symbolic meaning of a product we can show other people our own identity. However, if I consume Tate Modern this is not immediately visible to other people. I can only tell my friends about my experience. The fact that I chose Tate Modern for my brand experience and for everybody, who reads my blog, it also has a symbolic character of my identity. Furthermore, already the consumption of symbolically meaningful categories and brands can help us to create identity (Shankar and Fitchett, 2002) and it can help to define our sense of who we are (Aruvia, 2005). This means it is not necessary to use products with symbolic meaning visible to other people, but the mere consumption of Tate Modern can help me find and construct my identity. We are what we have is a very popular concept by Belk (1988) in his paper about possessions and the extended self. However, also he states that the extended self is not limited to objects, but also includes places. A place can therefore become part of ourselves and our identity. Belk (1998) uses the self and identity synonymously to how a person subjectively perceives who she or he is. It is not just about showing the symbolic meaning of products as representatives for our identity, but also the consumption of brands, which help us in the construction of identity. The consumption of Tate Modern is more to me than fulfilling a need or a want. I would not call it a desire, which is described as a hot passionate emotion by Belk et al. (2003). I can resist of not going to the museum and do not burn with desire when I go there, but visiting Tate Modern regularly has become part of my life here in London and if I were refused to be able to visit Tate Modern, something would be missing. I can probably best compare it to the concept of love in consumption (Ahuvia, 2005). With this I can also come back to my identity conflict with museums and art. While I distanced myself from art as a teenager, maybe to find my own identity and not the identity of my parents, I find now back to the art world and start to appreciate it. According to Ahuvia (2005) loved objects and activities can symbolically support an identity, which incorporates these conflicting aspects of self and the tension between what

the consumer wants to become and the consumers past identity. Loved objects and activities can help to resolve these conflicts and tensions. The brand journey will not end after I finished this report. The brand journey will go on and Tate Modern will support me on my way to construct an identity, which might have a connection to the past and my upbringing, but which is still my own. However, this leaves me with the question: is there really an own identity or is identity not always influenced by education, the culture of the place where we live and also of all the brands around us? How much is this really our own identity? How other Cultural Brands can learn from Tate Modern Cultural institutions and organisations have a different reason to exist than companies. While a companys main objective is to create profit, a cultural organisation most probably has a different mission. Tate for example does not have any shareholders, but is owned by the public, so everything they do and how the organisation is managed is to maximise value for the public (Tate, 2012). Cultural organisations might also work with artists and creative people who do not do their work mainly to earn money but do art for arts sake. On the one hand this means that the artists gain more out of doing creative work than just earning a salary, but also that artists have a particular view of how the creative work has to be performed (Caves, 2003). This might not be in line with consumer preferences and current market trends. A company has to design products and services the way consumers like it or they could convince consumers of the advantages of their products with advertising, so they are able to make a profit. However, creative people sometimes have different views than the majority of the consumers or even choose to swim against the stream. Cultural organisations face the challenge to offer products and services with high artistic or cultural value and at the same time satisfy a consumer target group, which is big enough to justify the costs. With public funding becoming tighter, the organisations, which manage this gap best, will be the ones who survive. Tate Modern can serve as a very good case, since it has a collection of very high artistic standard and organises temporary exhibitions, which receive worldwide recognition. At the same time Tate Modern attracts millions of visitors every year and is one of the most popular museums in the world. In Tate Modern you feel that you are a consumer and that they display the art according to the visitors need and taste. Tate Modern created a brand, which attracts many consumers and not only art lovers are enthusiastic about Tate Modern, but also people who would usually not go to art museums. Not every museum can afford a location like the one from Tate Modern, but other museums and cultural institutions might also start to open themselves up to the public and make their offers more accessible. Attracting more people

does not mean that they have to compromise with the quality. However, they could just sell it better to the public and create a valued brand. The more people can identify with a cultural institution or even use it to construct their own identity, the way I am able to do it with Tate Modern, the more the institutions also fulfill one of their main purpose: creating value for the public.

References Ahuvia, A. C. (2005) Beyond the Extended Self: Loved Objects and Consumers Identity Narratives, Journal of Consumer Research, 32, pp. 171-184. Askeegard, S. (2006) Brands as a global ideoscope in Schroeder, J. and Salzer Moerling, M. (eds.), Brand Culture, Oxon, Routledge, pp. 81-91. Belk, R. W. (1988) Possessions and the Extended Self, Journal of Consumer Research, 15:2, pp. 139-168. Belk, R. W. et al. (2003) The Fire of Desire: A Multisited Inquiry into Consumer Passion, Journal of Consumer Research, 30, pp. 326-351. Elliott, R. and Wattanasuwan, K. (1998) Brands as Symbolic Resources for the Construction of Identity, International Journal of Advertising, 17:2, pp. 131-144. Holt, D. B. (2004) How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding, Boston, Harvard Business School Publishing. Galloway, S. and Dunlop, S. (2007) A Critique of Definitions of the Cultural and Creative Industries in Public Policy, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13:1, pp. 17-31. Ollins, W. (2003) On Brand, London, Thames & Hudson Ltd. red Riezebos, R. (2003) Brand Management, Harlow, Pearson Education Limited. Shankar, A. and Fitchett, J. A. (2002) Having, Being and Consumption, Journal of Marketing Management, 18, pp. 501-516. Tate (2001) Tate Modern - the most popular modern art museum in the world (online) (cited 17th March 2012). Available from <URL:http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressreleases/110501.htm>. bulb (online) (cited 17th March 2012). Available from <URL:http://red- bulb.blogspot.co.uk/>.

Tate (2008) Tate: Funding Agreement (online) (cited 17th March 2012). Available from <URL: http://www.tate.org.uk/about/governancefunding/funding/Tate_Signed_Funding_Agreement_0 8-11.pdf>. Tate (2012) About Tate (online) (cited 11th March 2012). Available from <URL: http://www.tate.org.uk/about/>.