Departmental Politics and Social Media

So, this post had kind of two lessons.  The first is that, in this museum, each department is in charge of really specific things, and people do not like when another department does something they consider to be a part of their responsibilities. The second thing is that posts on social media are a precious commodity. 

This summer, the marketing department decided to commission a mural in the town square. They essentially had to have it completed within literally days of its approval with the town because Jackson gets a lot of tourists, so there is very strict rules during the summer about what can take up space on the town sidewalks and such. So although the artist was on standby, aware that there might be a mural, she had two days to  conceive of the concept and paint it. It turned out well, its is a black and white portrait of a moose, made of other local wildlife and landscapes with a sky blue background. It also contains a QR code that links automatically to a coupon that gives people $2 off admission to the museum and the hashtag #morethanart (more than art) because that is the catchphrase the marketing teem has been using. The idea was that people would take selfies and stuff with it, and then the
QR code would automatically open the coupon and spread the word.

Now, a lot of people at the museum had issues with this. The first reason being that, everything else that  the other departments do has to go through like three or four different committees before they actually go forward with something. Although this had to be rushed, if other departments had been involved it could have turned out better. The mural doesn’t have the name of the museum, and its over all just not clear what its affiliation is. I also think that that the curatorial team really would have liked some say in the content. Although it is outside of the museum grounds, that is the kind of thing the curatorial department would usually handle. I think over all the mural crossed over certain limes because it is not just an advertisement, its a work of public art, so to some people there was a question as to whether or not it should have been handled exclusively by the marketing team. Additionally, no one one had heard anything about it until it had been up for a few weeks. This was just a result of the fact that it was so rushed, but it made all of the other departments feel out of the loop and further discounted from it as a project. 

In addition to all of this, the marketing department runs the social media. Soooooo…. when they officially announced to mural via the the social media, they did that trendy thing with instagram where you post a whole picture in parts, so that when you are scrolling it doesn’t make sense, but when you click on the profile itself, all the individual images come together and you can see the whole. Well, we had an event that week, and the Special events Team was pretty upset that so many pictures were being posted, and none of them were promoting their event. In the programs meeting, they were specifically upset, because even if the marketing team did post something promoting the event, it would be white noise, because the public is only interested in a few posts a day and there were already a few. 

Anyway, I feel like I learned a lot in this meeting. A lot of people can get upset forever a lot of things when you do not communicate. I think people would have been substantially less upset if they had at least been aware of it. I also think departments can get a little touchy about what they deserve to be included on. Finally, I think that posts on social media are a precious commodity, so it should probably highlight everyones efforts as much as is possible.