Experience The Farquhar Collection through a rainforest in the National Museum of Singapore.
Challenge
The National Museum of Singapore is Singapore’s oldest museum with a history dating back to 1887. Unfortunately, just like its age, it is often associated with ancient artefacts and dusty showcases. That couldn’t be further from the truth! The museum strives for fresh ways to present history and culture, and an unconventional museum experience to our visitors. Our challenge was to change public perception and see the museum as a grand dame with a young soul, constantly evolving to stay relevant to the times.
This was made more challenging with several new entrants in Singapore’s arts and culture scene in the recent years. How do we stand out amid a saturated market filled with players leveraging their fresher and younger appeal? We needed to elevate the National Museum brand and communicate to our audiences that we are more than able to keep up with the times, despite being often associated as a history (and hence old and dusty) museum!
As reported by the Singapore Cultural Statistics Report by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, 2015 (Singapore’s SG50 jubilee celebrations) was a good year for the arts and cultural sector with a record number of 3.8 million people visiting the national museums and heritage institutions. But it was unfortunately not so for the National Museum of Singapore – visitorship dropped by approximately 22% from 2014 to 2015.
We want to have people stepping through our doors and spending time with us in the galleries, or participating in the museum’s many programmes. But when people don’t even know what they can find in our National Museum, it would be an uphill task to drive footfall.
How do we transform the National Museum of Singapore into the world-class museum that could rival any of the best cultural institutions from around the world? Can we become a must-visit in the itineraries of tourists seeking to understand Singapore’s history, or locals looking for a quality day-out with the family? How can we bring its “sexy-back” to make it a space where people – young and old – can connect with and want to spend time in?
Strategy
We began by looking inward. Rather than focusing on our weaknesses, we decided to build on our strengths. We had an amazing and extensive national collection. How could we herald something we had and transform it in such an extravagant measure that the public had no choice but to sit up and take notice?
We found the answer in one of the National Museum of Singapore’s prized collections – The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings.
The beautiful drawings of the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings, which are also displayed at the Goh Seng Choo Gallery at the National Museum of Singapore. The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings is a collection of 477 drawings that is invaluable to Southeast Asia as it allows definitive insight into the natural history and biodiversity of the region. The collection has inspired artists and craftsmen from watchmakers at Patek Philippe (who made news with an enamel dome clock with motifs of drawings from the collection), to local jewellery designers, who created limited-edition designs and one-of-a kind pieces for Singapore’s JewelFest 2015.
The collection has the significance and merits of a national treasure to pull the public in. We now had to get people to be excited about it. We set out to bring the collection into the 21st century and make it relevant in our digital era. In a time where moving images are king, we needed to contemporise these drawings to a visual generation who grew up watching videos, ensuring that their experience with the drawings at the museum was an immersive and interactive one. Using strong branding all around the museum, we ensured that visitors were immersed in the collection once they entered the doors of the museum – as if we were transporting them into the dense lush tropic rainforests of Southeast Asia.
But what is the use of creating amazing experiences if no one knows about it? To get the word out on the collection, we launched a multi-channel campaign encompassing online and on-ground initiatives to raise awareness and develop top-of-mind recall of the collection amongst the public and educate and interest people to head to the museum to experience the collection. We rolled out the red carpet for local and international media and curated one-of-a-kind experiences for them to also get (re)acquainted with the collection.
To drive traffic on social media channels, we also engineered the whole experience to be a highly social one. (Everyone knows that you weren’t really at an event unless it’s on your social feed, right?) One of our top considerations was ensuring a multitude of Instagram-worthy moments at the museum so that social media platforms would be flooded with snaps and videos of the William Farquhar collection, ultimately turning all our visitors into ambassadors that would take news of our beloved collection far and wide!
Execution
A re-imagined branding
When thinking of ways to publicise the collection in the museum, the highly visual William Farquhar Collection gave us plenty of opportunities to go absolutely wild!
We launched an entire rebranding for the William Farquhar collection, conceptualising a new logo to give it a fresh identity and turning the entire museum into a jungle - decorating lifts, toilet mirrors and feature walls (anything we could get our hands on, really!) with the William Farquhar collection branding.
Encounter the collection afresh
There was no playing it safe when it came to contemporising the collection – we carved out the museum’s entire 15m-high glass rotunda to feature the collection! Internationally-renowned Japanese Digital Art Collective, teamLab, partnered us to use state-of-the-art projection technology to transform the space into an immersive digital art installation titled Story of the Forest. The installation turned these prized drawings of flora and fauna into 3D animated illustrations. Oh and they interact with visitors by the way.
To complement the installation, we also introduced an app that visitors can use to “capture” flora and fauna on their mobile phone cameras and obtain information on them. More than just a fun feature, it also fulfils one of our main objectives – to educate the public about the collection and the ecological history of Singapore.
We even set up a pop-up interactive corner titled Second Nature where kids could blow into flowers and see them light up and touch stones to hear them play music! Visitors could also fold origami flowers and contribute them to a wall of origami art!
Creative online outreach
#Didyouknow that that though a slow loris is slow by nature, it can cover up to 8km in one night?
The many interesting fun facts about the flora and fauna in the collection made for great social content and we were sure to make use of them on our social platforms to publicise the collection. Because still images would never do justice to Story of the Forest, we produced videos that gave the public a digital taste of the installation.
Capitalising on several festive periods, we also pushed out relevant content in relation to the collection, grabbing on to all opportunities we had to let people know about this installation that we were so proud of!
Extensive Media Relations
We’re big on media relations and nothing makes our media friends more appreciative than when you think for them. We engaged the editorial team early to secure extensive feature pieces, even going to media gatekeepers from different regional markets to explore potential stories. We worked out the little details, facilitated email interviews with overseas spokespersons for long-lead media, and gave exclusive behind-the-scenes access during the construction of Story of the Forest, allowing the audiences of these media to journey with the National Museum right from the inception of the installation. We also worked with the teamLab publicity team to sync media efforts and announcement dates so that coverage in both countries would be maximised.
Results
Our multi-channel integrated campaign led to shining results on all fronts!
National Museum of Singapore experienced an overall increase in visitorship by some 20% in just 2 months! And because of the (re)launch of the Farquhar Collection, it also funnelled visitors to explore the other galleries in the museum – some registering 1.8 times the amount of footfall.
More importantly, the campaign ignited a real change in the way people perceived the museum and sparked a multitude of positive conversations about the museum’s efforts in using innovative ways of presenting history.
Singaporeans and visiting tourists fuelled these conversations and became our ambassadors! We even managed to get several prominent figures to chip in – from local politician, Mr Baey Yam Keng, to the donor of the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings, Mr Goh Geok Khim and even internationally-known Norwegian singer-song writer, AURORA (who was dancing as she made her way through the glass rotunda), everyone aided in promoting the experiential collection!
The museum also made believers out of the local and international media. Their strong support cemented the museum’s prominence locally and internationally. We worked with media to deliver reporting that was…
… extensive: We reaped over 100 stories just from its launch weekend alone, yielding a return of investment by over 900 times!
… varied: There was no escaping news of the museum and the collection as we ensured widespread coverage – from cultural to architecture magazines, from videos on online lifestyle sites to in-depth personality interviews on local papers. We also managed to secure multiple cover stories and multiple photo spreads. It generated renewed interest on all aspects of William Farquhar, including his descendants which one of them happened to be Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.
… international: News travelled far beyond local shores. International media such as Bloomberg, BBC, Xinhua News Agency, The Bangkok Post, NHK, Nikkei Asian Review, Jiji Press covered the collection and installation. More importantly, they spoke on how the National Museum of Singapore brand is staying relevant to its visitors.
… positive: More than the volume of press coverage, the exclusive media tours and interview opportunities had paid off richly with media who not only covered the launch, but commented and gave it raving reviews as well.
One incident with a young reporter from The Business Times, Jacquelyn Cheok, stood out for us. While bringing her on a tour of the installation, she commented that she had always enjoyed museum visits but was sceptical of the use of digital technology to promote their collections. That day, the tour had completely changed her mind – she was now convinced that through the tactful use of technology, collections in museums could be showcased in truly creative ways that could bring a fresh perspective to them.
Our labour of love had truly paid off.