Brand refresh and integrated benefit marketing
The brand new, award-winning Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Wembley, Alberta had everything going for it right out of the gate: a beautiful, internationally-lauded facility, leading-edge interactive exhibits, and gorgeous dinosaur fossil displays that any institution would envy.
Yet, outside of the Peace Region, few people knew it existed, or maybe thought they had heard about it once, but weren’t quite sure what it was all about.
During my first week on the job as the museum’s new manager of marketing and communications, one symptom stood out to me like a sore thumb: the museum’s image was based almost solely on the building.
Nothing against the building. At all. It’s awesome. Nothing short of a masterpiece. But will a beautiful building alone bring people to spend their time and money there?
“I’ve never been able to figure out what that place is all about,” a local told me when he learned where I worked. “Never bothered to stop in.”
“Dinosaurs are exciting!” I explained to my colleague. “People need to feel that excitement when they see us. They need to want to visit and discover dinosaurs, whether it’s for the first time, or the eighty-seventh time.”
That is benefit marketing. Benefit marketing doesn’t worry as much about the product or service itself, it focuses on what that product or service does for the customer. In the case of the museum, that benefit is the awe and joy of discovery.
And thus, the ‘discover dinosaurs.’ campaign was born.
“Something’s different at the museum,” I was told several months later. “The ship has turned and people are excited again!”