The British Music Experience

Communication Strategy

Introduction: General presentationThe British Music Experience is Britain's interactive museum of popular music. It is a

permanent exhibition installed into The O2 Bubble, part of The O2 in Greenwich in London.Opened in March 2009, it features a retrospective look at the British music industry since 1944, and features a wide selection of content and experiences, presented using a range of interactive media.As a matter of fact, British Music Experience was created to fill a gap in the UK Heritage sector for Rock and Pop Music.

The BME contains a wide and varied collection of both genuine musical artefacts and interactive experiences using digital technologies. These exhibits are arranged thematically to explore different areas of interest in music. Over 3,000 images, 600 video clips, 3,000 artist videos and over 600 items of artist and music are presented in the museum.

Surrounding these exhibits are seven zones exploring different eras in British music since 1945 up to the present day, held together by a giant timeline containing thousands of facts, headlines, images, videos and animations that can be explored through the use of a trackball. The BME is clearly the place where we can learn, see, play, dance and sing.

Major interactive exhibits which can be found in the museum include:

Timelines Showcases Hey DJ! Where It's At Anatomy of a Pop Star Gibson Interactive Studio The Great Divide Dance The Decades Pre-Show Sound Tunnel Rock Galaxy Table Talk Atlantic Crossing Transmission Playback Future Wall1 The Beat Goes On

Mission:

The mission of the BME is to advance the education and appreciation of the art, history, and science of music in Britain. Through combining museum, cutting-edge audio-visual technology, testing and a world-class archive of popular music with some of the most coveted music memorabilia of all time, the British Music Experience is a must-see for any music fan.

Objectives:

Presentation of interactive learning displays and exhibitions, public events and concerts.

Acquisition, preservation, maintenance and exhibition of artistic works, instruments, papers, interviews or artefacts.

Provision of research, sound recording, performance, and archiving facilities Drive visitor footfall. Based at The O2 in Greenwich, the museum faces a geographical

challenge from being set away from the center of the tourism hub.

1/Marketing presentation

Price: Adult tickets to the British Music Experience cost £12 whereas children tickets cost £6. Concessions tickets cost £8.50 (students, unemployed…) Smarticket technology allows visitors to "tag" areas of the attraction and save recordings which can be accessed via the BME website. Tickets also allow visitors to claim three free iTunes downloads.

Segmentation:

Target:

The British Music Experience is mainly targeting young people, interested in music area, wishing to sing, to play guitar, guitar bass or drums and who want to discover old and new generations of music. It also target music lovers, who want to rediscover their old days and remember their childhood memories.

Indeed, BME has to appeal to the broadest imaginable church of music fans , from Punk to Disco, Mod to Heavy Metal, R’n’B to Rap... and be as attractive to a teenage girl as her granddad.

Slogan & brand image

We can see clearly the coherence between the positioning of the museum (who they target, how they are different from the other museums) and the slogan “C’mon Feel the noise”. Indeed, we notice the young and fashion tone with the slanting writings but also with the colors, very flashes and diversified.

2/ Current CommunicationThe British Music Experience is a recent but is attracting more and more people, coming from all over the world. Despite a communication strategy somewhat few intrusive, not using all available media, the museum still manages to reach a population more focused than some other more general museums.

For their strategy and communication, they asked Thinkfarm, an advertising and marketing company, to develop the brand identity and an advertising campaign to launch this new experience through British music history.

a) Media The British Music Experience launch advertising campaign visuals build on the idea of music ‘crossover’ by juxtaposing images of artists from different types and different eras to give an

idea of the breadth of the exhibition experience. Campaign activity included national press, online activity and poster campaign on tube stations. BME has selected broadcast channels according to its targets: rock music magazines, subway stations frequented by younger (Camden Town)…

Press: BME Double Page Spread

*

*

Poster campaign: BME Posters & Single Pages (several tube stations)

Huge poster campaign in Camden town

BME Escalator Campaign

BME Onsite Branding

The following slides show how the logotype and campaign typography and colour scheme seen here on exterior banners and interior signage, have provided effective brand coherence in the BME exhibition.

Online:

The website, very well developed, inform on all activities and exhibitions (temporary or not) that may be discovered in the museum. Thanks to it we can buy tickets online, get practical information, get last news, be membership, know more about BME… It is a veritable showcase and source of communication for the BME.

The Facebook page is unavoidable nowadays. According BME, it broadcast all the last news of the museum, music in general, videos... It stocks a lot of pictures of events already passed into or outside the museum. Focusing more on young people, it is a reliable and relevant strategy for the museum. However, they must put it forward even more because they have only 8209 fans on the page.

B) Hors media

Street marketing: Peninsular Square Installation

The BME “On Tour” is a street marketing experience and events realised during several festival of music (Sonisphere for example) thanks to a famous English bus all decorated of the colours and universe of the BME. Inside, we can find pictures and timeline of rock and roll music. The goal is to attract people, discovering the museum experience into the bus.

BME Retail Branding , merchandising

To communicate and spread its image, the museum has developed a range of very important products all around the brand BME. Indeed, the following slide shows how the logotype, campaign typography and colour scheme, seen here on t-shirts, badges, gifts… The logo has been extremely effective design element in the BME merchandise and retail outlet.

Customer relationship, loyal promotion The museum is developing a loyal strategy fairly accurately and efficiently providing various benefits for VIP members of the museum. A simple registration to a newsletter is needed to be a member. The following screen shows the different advantages that membership can have; they are quite interesting:

Partnership and sponsorship

First of all, The Co-operative Group, signed on as the exhibition's main sponsor, pledging to give away 15,000 tickets over the next three years, through schools, social networking sites, youth media and Co-operative stores. The BME is a registered charity and non-profit organization supported by five major sponsors:

Gibson Guitar Sennheiser, makers of microphones, headphones and audio equipment Getty Images, provider of news, sports and entertainment pictures BBC World Wide PRS for Music - The Performing Rights Society

These partnerships allow the museum to obtain and borrow any materials in its premises, developing the brand image of the different brands, distributing quality products (guitars, helmets audio ...), offering discounted or free tickets on their site.

3/ Conclusion, criticize and solutionsThe British Music Experience has settled an efficient and important strategy of advertising in tube stations, press and has developed a good customer relationship management.

However, the museum is not known enough yet and needs to develop its notoriety. Indeed, young and music fans are the main targets but are not enough solicited.

As a matter of fact, we can propose to the British Music Experience different ways of communications which are not exploited yet:

Developing of Adwords campaign on the internet: internet is well used by young people, searching a lot on Google. We could broadcast adwords announces on Google when enter these keywords:

Guitar Drums Sing Music museum History of music

Rock and roll Music Gibson Seinnheiser

The campaign would be several announce:

“You are crazy about music? Let’s visit our British Music Experience!”“You want to be unbeatable on music? Let’s learn all about music at British Music Experience!”

Created banners online on different websites. (music, rock, young websites) The goal is to lead people to the BME website, to attract them:

Sidebar: “Let’s discover all about music!”

Advertising banners and advertising on screen during rock concerts. The broadcast about the BME would be a

very efficient communication strategy, targeting without any doubt fan music (they have paid for a concert, they can pay for a music museum)

Flyers in all the rock shop and music stores in London, with promotion

“Buy a mediator Gibson and then get your free entry in the BME!”

“Buy a drumstick ViceFirth, and then get you free entry in the BME!”

Television and Radio might be too expensive for the moment. (Not enough budget and too massive strategy)

Sources:

http://www.britishmusicexperience.com/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7929653.stmhttp://www.londonpass.fr/london-attractions/british-music-experience.htmlhttp://nsa-ccskills.co.uk/news/top-european-award-british-music-experience

Brochures, Guide of the BME& Visit of the Museum