BRAND-INFLUENCER-MUSEUM COLLABORATIONS

MEET THE MUSEOLOGIST!

Hi everyone, I'm Destina Hande, it's my turn to take-over in "meet the museologist" corner for today. Now, after three years those who follow ART & TOWN regularly know me, but many of you don't really know me because I'm not around much. I am a museologist and also a translation specialist and content creator of ART & TOWN. My previous experiences include working in a museum, an art gallery, working in a magazine, with brand groups, working in one of the world's leading foreign language education institutions, translating art and artist books, creative writing, setting up exhibitions... and art consultancy as well. The things I don't count are on my CV. At this point, I think you are wondering about my education, I am a graduate of Saint-Michel French High School, I have my undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yıldız Technical University, I have received various trainings in Paris and London, and my biggest hobbies are constantly researching, traveling and taking photographs! Even my photograph was exhibited in a Biennial, I forgot to add it to my CV, anyway... Right now, I am getting different experiences in my field, and I will share them in time. Well, I'm delighted to have met you too, I will give you some information without realizing it, I usually do this, I also like humor while doing this :)

Destina Hande Cil, museologist and curator of @artandtownmag
Our topic today is the "social media platforms" that everyone is so addicted to, and our "museums", which are seen as the sacred place of intellectuals but are very eager to remove the borders...

According to research and visitor survey results, museums show an increase of 16% in the audience between the ages of 35-44, while on the other hand, they show a decrease of 23% as they cannot reach the young group between the ages of 18-24.

So, which way will museums follow to reach the young audience in the 18-24 age group?

"Influencers and Social Media"

Don't roll your eyes right away, there is a fact that you have to face that while you can't open your presentation in digitalization seminars, different social media strategies come to the fore in the world :) When social media is mentioned, even when we say influencer and Youtuber, we have an act of 'escape' :) "Time on social media it's a complete waste of time to spend", "we do not welcome social media as an institution, we do not care about it at all", "influencers are those with make-up phenomena", "how easily these Youtubers get rich"... Feedbacks are usually like this because our influencers and Youtuber definition: "being constantly lynched, exposing cosmetics and fashion shopping links, insisting that there is a shooting schedule exaggerated as if they were going to shoot at the Hollywood Studios with the theme "I'm sooo busy", the start of brand obsession as a feature that did not exist before but self-extracting feature opened later, trolling the news of the magazine, opening gifts from brands under the name of vlog, making music videos and closing." However, the influencer and Youtuber audience in the world, as well as social media platforms, are not ignored, on the contrary, "both parties can cooperate by protecting their own identity". How interesting! :) I've worked with both parties, so I can appeal to both audiences. I also became a museum professional, I also worked with brand groups for influencer-Youtuber collaborations. Therefore, based on my experience, I can write such articles about social media strategies, influencer and Youtuber audiences, and I can choose which points to draw attention to because I know the behind-the-scenes.

Consciously" -yes, you read it right, I wrote 'consciously'- there are even Youtubers who are professionally recruited by art institutions and organizations. In fact, when I prepared a presentation titled "Social Media Strategies in Museums" for the "Museums and Museology" course during my master's period, I also touched on Youtube and being a Youtuber. In my presentation, I discussed the development of the YouTube channel "The Brain Scoop". Although the "The Brain Scoop" channel is currently under the name Field Museum, it did not start on the Youtube platform as a channel under the roof of the museum. It started with a volunteer named Emily Graslie (Youtuber) at the Philip L. Wright Zoology Museum on the University of Montana campus, giving lectures about and promoting the collection during her working hours at the museum. Emily Graslie, our fledgling Youtuber, took her passion for sharing the museum's collection to a different point when she later started working with Youtuber educator Hank Green and producer Michael Aranda living in Montana. She continues to increase her success in her channel, which she continues professionally under the roof of Field Museum, with the numbers she has reached on the online platform. In the last three years, 12 million people have been watching The Brain Scoop channel and therefore the Field Museum collection. When we look at this example, the museum is working with a Youtuber. I hope you didn't faint :) Yes, we are talking about a "Professional Museum Youtuber". When we come to the subject of influencer, we see that the influencer and Youtuber audience are intertwined. Generally, a person you come across on Instagram has a channel on the Youtube platform too. When we look at the Influencer and Youtuber audience, you really have a very "busy" life, but in addition, you do not have any special area for you. Like "Keeping Up with the Kardashians", you reflect everything you do, everything you wear, your every job, every specialty to the other side in a way, you try to keep your audience up to date with many different techniques by influencing them by arousing curiosity. It's a really tiring job when you think about it that way. The Influencer and Youtuber audience has actually become more famous than the audience we used to describe as "celebrity". The most important reason for this is that it keeps the 16-24 age range by updating it 24/7. For these reasons, it does not ignore the influencer and Youtuber audience in museums around the world and in collaborations with brands.

Let's look at the art institutions and organizations in Turkey. The practice of "managing museums social media from a single source" (regardless of where they belong) does not have the right strategy in terms of reaching the museum's audience, but we are faced with such a practice in most museums in Turkey. Each museum has its own staff, its own policy, its own collection, and "its own identity". An outside professional cannot know and promote the museum in question as much as its own staff, and in this case, it may not be enough to reflect the museum correctly. Managing all of them from one point prevents activating "creative thoughts" as well. Speaking of creativity, the example we're going to examine now is a collaboration for a brand to work with different museums and focus on a successful name in the Influencer & Youtuber audience.

We focus on the "social media and influencer marketing strategies" that the "Swatch" brand has done with museums in different locations since 2018. The positive effects of brands on the income sources of museums and the methods of reaching young audiences are the main issues we need to focus on. Swatch Brand Group drew attention to the "Museum Journey" collection in its press release. Focusing on artwork from museums around the world, the Museum Journey series has already presented its collections with the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in the Netherlands, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, the Musée du Louvre in Paris and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

The Swatch X MoMA collaboration focused on selected masterpieces and artists from the museum's collection, let's see which ones:

Vincent van Gogh (The Starry Night), Gustav Klimt (Hope II), Henri Rousseau (The Dream), Piet Mondrian (Composition in Oval with Color Planes 1), Tadanori Yokoo ( The City and Design, The Wonders of Life on Earth, Isamu Kurita and New York).

Swatch is here this time in collaboration with Centre Pompidou! There has been a lot of news about the collaboration and the collection, but there are some details that everyone overlooked, this time they did something different. Museologists are for these days :) An online exhibition created for the collection and collaboration with a worldwide popular influencer, especially in France! Léna Situation! 

(IG: @lenamahfouf)

I just want to point out that I follow Léna too because I'm talking about a real "influencer" here! She collaborates with world-famous brands but she is not obsessed with brands, she edits her own videos, even the indispensable "Barbie" of the younger age group was produced in her name - in this case, a Youtuber that appeals to the younger age group too- but her only concern is to survive climbing the Kilimanjaro mountain and -no waayyy- you can't believe this, she is very happy in her studio type home :) 

The purpose of being an influencer is to "impress", as it turns out. The most effective way to reach the young audience is to find an "influencer who influences them" :) From this perspective, I think Lena was a successful choice, because she is one of the rare names in her own audience who can make progress while preserving their identity. While the architecture of Centre Pompidou has a structure that affects new generation cultural and artistic institutions, the collaboration of the Swatch brand with the museum should have consisted of equally impressive choices. -If you research Centre Pompidou's architecture and construction stages, you can understand what I mean better.- From this perspective, Swatch's marketing strategies include a young and dynamic progress. Centre Pompidou's audience between the ages of 18-24 is a subject that should be examined after this point.

Dutty calls museum researchers!