Cultural PR Conference

21 January 2011

Overcoming PR challenges for small and regional venues

Kate Streeter, London Shh…

London Shh…(Small Historic Houses) was created in 2007 when 7 historic houses
teamed up. All of the houses shared a number of challenges – they were run by a very
small staff teams, had limited press and marketing resources, they were competing with
larger, better resourced venues in London and had very, very small budgets. They were
also off the beaten track which made attracting new audiences a challenge.

Their first joint venture was a launch party and fundraising event for London Shh…They
achieved this through pooling their guest lists, time, resources and asking for things for
free (!).

After a successful launch, they collaborated again on the Mayor’s Story of London
festival. Working together enabled London Shh… to apply for Renaissance London
funding to purchase reusable marketing and exhibition materials.

The next step for London Shh…was to develop their brand identity. They launched a
competition for Masters Design students to design their logo, but unfortunately this
attracted little interest. They then worked with a design company to develop a website
that met the needs of all of the partner museums, was distinct from the individual
museum’s usual work, had a heritage feel but was not “dusty and boring”, would not take
up too much staff time and would achieve the tangible result of achieving press
coverage that they would not be able to create working alone. It also needed to be
accessible to all of the museums to update as and when they wished and guidelines had
to be set about what was appropriate to put on the site.

The benefits of working together meant that the London Shh…museums gained more
press coverage through pooling resources. They also became more creative about
gaining coverage in publications they would not normally be featured in. For example,
Burgh House was featured in a home furnishing/decoration magazine.

The challenges were finding the time for representatives from the 7 museums to meet,
turning London Shh…into a formal entity and securing funding. Planning, organising
and delegation were key to this.

The next step for London Shh…is to expand by attracting more museums to join them
and to develop their social network through Facebook and Twitter.
Andrew Willshire, CultureLine

When the new London Overground train line was opened in May 2010, it suddenly
connected North East London to South East London. This provided a new opportunity
for museums that previously had not worked together to be jointly marketed. Ten
museums that were within ten minutes walking distance of a London Overground station
were identified as partners. The only connection between the museums was their
proximity to a London Overground station. This provided a new proposition to the media
and visitors.

An integrated campaign was created to promote the museums. This included:

• Creating the CultureLine identity

• Setting up the CultureLine website
• Poster and leaflet campaign, with support from Transport for London
• An insert and e-campaign with Time Out
• PR campaign - supported by Renaissance London and TFL.

The challenges faced by the PR campaign were that the museums had a disparate set
of collections and programmes, ranging from art, anthropology, local history to
engineering. They each had different levels of in-house PR expertise and there was no
budget for new programming. There was also initial scepticism from the TFL PR team
who did not feel the campaign had enough value.

A PR agency were brought in to identify target markets, to get buy in from TFL and
create a strategic approach that would secure media coverage beyond the immediate
launch. They also created template press materials for the individual museums to use.

A programme of PR activity was created. This included a press launch in May, linked to
half-term week. In July a survey was commissioned around the cultural habits of
North/South Londoners, which was successful in generating press coverage. In August
the PR agency identified a weekend when each of the ten museums had an event or
activity happening. This was re-packaged as the “CultureLine Discovery Weekend”. In
September a CultureLine debate about London was held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

This activity resulted in over 300 pieces of online and off-line coverage, including a
double page article in the London Evening Standard; ten pieces of broadcast coverage;
coverage for all of the ten partner museums; and increases in new audiences for the
museums.
Catherine Braithwaite, creativetourist.com

Creative Tourist was created by Manchester Museums Consortium, a group of nine

museums and galleries in Manchester. It is a Manchester based online arts magazine,
which publishes features, interviews, news and vodcasts with the UK’s best-known
writers and artists.

As a partnership campaign Creative Tourist was not felt to be newsworthy enough.

Instead, they decided to highlight different elements of their content i.e. top 25 lists,
blogs, international writers were commissioned to write articles/blogs. Creative Tourist
also gave smaller venues the opportunity to be reviewed and featured online.

As a result of Creative Tourist, the North West Press Officers meetings were
resurrected. Journalists were invited to media socials and were able to meet press
officers from lots of cultural venues at once. These media socials were helpful in
generating coverage. In addition, Creative Tourist put together an annual calendar of
events for journalists which was found to be very useful.

In October 2010, Creative Tourist organised the Manchester Weekender. This event,
which spanned many venues across the city attracted lots of press coverage and
encouraged journalists and visitors to go to venues they would not normally go to.

Creative Tourist has found working in partnership useful for sharing contacts and
resources.

Q&A

Q. How did you deal with difficult external partners?

AW - Try to think how you can show all partners “what’s in it for them”. For example, by
combining visitor figures or showing the media what your unique selling point is.

Q. How were these campaigns evaluated?

KS – In the case of London Shh…each museum evaluates PR campaigns using

different markers, but the amount of coverage is a good marker for London Shh…

CB – For Creative Tourist, having the press teams from different venues being able to
say to their Directors that visitor figures are increasing and that they are making new
contacts through the campaign was useful

AW – Be careful of using visitor figures as a measure as other external factors can

influence this

Q. Where were the Creative Tourist media socials held?

CB – In different, interesting venues around Manchester. London journalists weren’t

invited, Cultural Tourist focussed more on journalists from the North West
Q. Is it difficult to get London journalists to Manchester?

AW – It’s harder these days for journalists to get clearance to go out of the office

CB – Sometimes it’s easier to work with freelancers. They often have more time and
flexibility