1st December 2008
This power to cross-promote venues efficiently is a good argument in favour of a group wide branding; it’s efficient, clear and brings cost benefits.
But bringing venues together in this way can be problematic. An umbrella brand may run the risk of eclipsing, or at worst obliterating, the distinct personality of individual museums, especially where institutions are disparate in nature. Tyne & Wear Museums rebranded its group identity in 2005, but purposely left individual sites with their own styles. The TWM identity is instead used as a kind of quality marquee to endorse the different services.
Jim Richardson, Director of branding group Sumo finds it's an approach which works well. “It’s a strong but simple parent brand that sits in the corner of each leaflet, poster and so on, while each of their twelve venues has an individual identity. This really ticks two boxes: it lets the organisation cross-market the TWM brand, which also acts as a marquee of quality, and allows each venue the room to market themselves on their own merits.”
Perhaps the worse case scenario for group branding is the creation of a parent brand that doesn’t really mean anything to anyone. Richardson believes that monolithic branding can be taken too far.
“There has been a trend for implementing this kind of parent brand for a group of museums, often at the expense of the individual museums’ personalities,” says Richardson. “It’s important to leave room for museums to show what makes them special and not be too heavy handed with the brand. I think that the National Museum Wales and National Museums Scotland parent brands overpower the individual venues and become quite bland.”
The full article can be found in Museums Journal, December 2008