Look Out TED, The Art Museum Is Coming For You

A significant part of any business plan is to identify the target market and the players who will compete for that target market. In the art world, and particularly the art museum world, the conversation about competition is challenging.

Art institutions are typically organized as non-profits and often focus on development for revenue – development being defined as developing relationships with people who already value the product being delivered. In a development-focused institution the competition is of course other museums and cultural institutions. This myopic view hinders growth (i.e. pursuit of greater accessibility to the institution and thus mission) AND it leaves a lot of money on the table. It would be like google only considering Yahoo and other search engines as its competition.

The alternative to development driving revenue is marketing. Marketing is certainly retaining people who value your product, but more importantly it is expanding market share by enticing people who do not already demand your product to start desiring your offerings. Really good marketing is about finding people who share a company’s values but do not necessarily see how the product delivers on those values. In marketing, who a company considers competition moves beyond vendors peddling similar product. Marketing is why Google builds its strategy with Apple on its mind.

SO, WHO IS THE COMPETITION FOR ART INSTITUTIONS?

A business needs to clearly know its product to know its competition. Let’s start with some basic questions. What is an art museum composed of? In condensed form, museums are: buildings, objects, curators and programming. What does an art museum do? A museum thoughtfully designs exhibitions that combine objects and knowledge to engage ones intellect. What is the product of a museum?  A museum creates platforms for delivering beautiful and provocative content. Museums are a medium for the exchange of ideas.

Museums sound a lot like many other institutions. Competition for market share still includes other museums and cultural organizations like schools and libraries. But it also includes just about any other medium of sharing information. The market opportunity of museum includes people interested in publications, podcasts, lightning talks, TED Talks, even the local watering hole. There are many “places”, well beyond what I have listed, where people find opportunity to engage in philosophical experiments.

Once the competition or market prospects have been identified, business typically wants to determine where the greatest opportunity exists. Market opportunity is calculated by two things: the size of the market, monetary value and/or delivery on mission, that could be gained; and the ease with which the market could be redirected. In this case I think one of the best organizations for museums to look at as competition is TED Talks and other sources of infotainment that society is enamored with right now.

With an identified opportunity, good businesses knows how to utilize their assets to pursue those gains. Museums have a wealth of assets to enhance their own idea sharing platform and distinguish themselves from anyone. Who else sits on billions of dollars of art and other valuable pieces of history. If I were TED I would be looking over my shoulder.