Museum marketing: the magical mix for Jheronimus Bosch [case]

[jrineakter]

This year, the Noordbrabants Museum presented the large retrospective exhibition 'Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of a genius'. The museum, which usually focuses on offline marketing, has determined and implemented a mature online strategy in record time. As an online consultant, I would like to take you on a journey in this project.



In 1967, Het Noordbrabants Museum received 275,000 visitors instead of the expected 30,000 during the big Hieronymus Bosch exhibition. Today, that is called a blockbuster . Paintings were loaned to Het Noordbrabants Museum by museums all over the world and sometimes simply wrapped in paper and transported to them in hand luggage.

That same year, Boudewijn de Groot sang about the 'long procession into the mountains of the circus Jeroen Bosch' (The land of Maas and Waal). A visionary view, because the queue of visitors for the museum's ticket office went around the corner of the street every day. All those people waiting to catch a glimpse of the paintings of the artist from 's-Hertogenbosch. Such a popular exhibition was unusual for the Netherlands and certainly for the museum in 's-Hertogenbosch.

The success of 2016
Now, 500 years after the artist's death, it has taken about ten years to recreate the exhibition. In a period of three months, the museum welcomed 421,700 visitors. That is more than the annual visitors in 2014 and 2015 combined. This required a temporary expansion of the number of employees from 50 to over 300 during the exhibition. Within a few weeks, tickets for the exhibition were no longer available. In order to meet the great interest, the museum extended its opening hours three times. From 70 hours, to 86 hours, to 98 hours, to finally 119 hours per week. Normally, the museum is open 36 hours per week. During the closing weekend, the Bosch exhibition was open for 39 hours without interruption.

Besides the obvious logistical differences compared to 1967, another major difference is the arrival of the internet. A new world for the museum, which even Hieronymus Bosch had not foreseen in his imaginative works.

5 innovations and results
1. A campaign website to get to know Jheronimus Bosch
To make a flying start online, the corporate website from 2013 was replaced by a modern, responsive campaign website . The goal: to inspire visitors, to take them along in the story of Jheronimus Bosch and to provide a clear call-to-action (CTA). The campaign website functioned as a take-over of the corporate website. The quick decision-maker could go directly to the ticket shop with the CTA button above the fold (the visible part of the website without scrolling). Visitors looking for more background and practical information had the option to continue to the ticket shop at the bottom of the website.

In three months, more than one million unique visitors visited the website and ticket shop, 45 percent of whom on mobile or tablet. With the exception of a handful of countries, all countries armenia telegram number list in the world are represented in the statistics. The largest peak in visitor numbers can be seen during the opening of the exhibition in February. The other peaks can be explained by the communicated extended opening hours of the museum.

JeroenBosch_graph

2. From box office sales to online ticket shop
A major change in the museum's operations is the new online ticket shop. In order to prevent long lines at the cash register, it was decided to offer as many tickets online as possible. A major adjustment that will also ensure good online accessibility after this exhibition. The ticket shop is currently being redesigned so that it can also be used for all future exhibitions.

The ticket shop worked with time slots during the Bosch exhibition , allowing visitors to enter the exhibition within a time frame of one hour (they could then stay in the museum as long as they wanted). A completely new way of working for the museum and its employees. But also, both offline and online, a considerable logistical challenge.