feature: SCIENCE CENTRES
In brands
we trust
As competition for
consumers’ leisure time and
money increases, as the range
of choices for a ‘day out’
widens, as people travel more
and further, the role of
branding for science centres
and other visitor destinations is
growing. What does it mean to
develop a brand? How should
destinations go about it?
And where will it take them?
Anna Brown, a Senior
Consultant with
Locum Destination Consulting,
investigates.
ANALYSIS
A family’s day out in South-East England could involve a choice between shopping at
Bluewater, playing at Legoland, learning at the Natural History Museum, sightseeing in
Oxford, etc. All else being equal (which sometimes it is), the choice will be based on brand,
understood in its widest sense.
A brand is not a logo, a name, a product or an advertising campaign. It governs these
manifestations in multiple media, but as they proliferate and alter over time, the brand
remains the same. A new design company doesn’t change the brand, it changes the ‘visual
identity’, possibly the ‘trademark’, certainly the advertising – in some cases repositioning
or refashioning the brand. But the brand itself has more staying power than any product,
location, typeface or CEO.
A strong brand can’t be pinned down, can’t be reduced to any one image or medium,
and therefore it can’t be completely controlled by its makers. Take Coca-Cola, the most
recognised and most highly valued brand in the world. This year’s Interbrand league table
gives Coca-Cola a value of US$73 billion. Microsoft is a close second at US$70 billion, with
IBM in third place at US$53 billion.
Coca-Cola rules the world, you might say. But does it? Or does the (consumer) world
rule back? The famous case of New Coke and Coca-Cola Classic in the mid 1980s shows
the power of a consumer response to a perceived change in the brand. If the formula
had been changed but not the packaging, would the backlash have been equally strong?
What about the packaging but not the formula? Consumers responded to what was seen
as an abandonment of the authentic-thing-which-is-Coca-Cola, manifested through a
combination of product, design and marketing. The American public expressed a strong
sense of ownership of this ‘authentic thing’: a sense of ownership of the brand.
The consumer experience of the brand is made up of a fluid mix of information: the taste
of the drink, the visual expression of the brand (or sub-brand) on a particular container,
the look of a supermarket display, the advertising to which they are exposed through
a range of media, the ‘kind of people’ they see walking down the street carrying a can
of Coke, product placement on television and in film, references to the brand in pop
songs and novels, whether their friends and neighbours buy the product, whether their
role models are sponsored by it, etc, etc. We use brands to construct our own visual
identities, and read them as clues to the identities of people and organisations around
us. With this level of personal involvement, no wonder consumers occasionally fight back
against an unwanted alteration of a familiar brand. The lesson is clear: understand the
market, respect the consumer.
Consumers are shaping brands all the time, associating them with lifestyles or families,
using their logos as visual cues in popular culture, ironically appropriating their
advertising campaigns, being loyal or disloyal to their products, answering questions
about them in focus groups, and so on. A strong, familiar brand (whether strongly liked
or disliked) is as much a creation of its consumers as of its company. Smart companies
know this, and are in the business of ‘brand management’. The brand is, after all, their most
stable and most long-lasting asset.
Most talk about brand centres on large companies selling products and services under
their brand names. Disney, McDonald’s, IBM, Microsoft and Coca-Cola all operate worldwide, tailoring their products and advertising strategies to different markets, building
the strength of their brand (and challenging its counterfeit uses) as they expand
geographically and symbolically. This expansion can become part of a historical narrative:
when did Coca-Cola come to your country? What about McDonald’s? In Eastern Europe,
Africa and Asia, the answers to these questions connect to a pivotal moment in the
history of each country in the twentieth century.
The global expansion of (mostly American) big brands has been compared to the
European empire-building of previous centuries, which began with commerce. Like
LOCUM DESTINATION R E V I E W
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political empires, brands depend on converting local populations to
build their strength and sustainability. Their weapons and methods
are different, but what they’re fighting for is the same: loyalty and
trust.
The dynamic governing the evolution of commercial brands like
those mentioned thus far can be generalised to: competition for
consumer trust in a variety of geographical or socio-economic
markets, fuelled by the creative tension that exists between each of
those markets and the central brand strategy, and assessed through
the (cultural and financial) capital value of the brand.
Science centres should not just think of branding as acquiring a
colourful logo. It needs to be reflected through all aspects of the
physical nature of the centre, and the way it projects itself to the
outside world. The state of the toilets, for example, will have a
small, possibly subconscious effect on the way that the brand is
perceived by the customer. The build-up of all those small sensory
perceptions creates the brand image. The best brands have no flaws:
every element of the product and the way it is projected fits with
the image. Branding is holistic.
The Locum Brand Dynamic ©
The same dynamic obtains outside of the commercial world,
although we have not yet reached the point where Interbrand has
a league table showing values for the brands of charities, museums
or nations. Greenpeace, Oxfam and Amnesty could certainly be
subject to the same process of brand valuation, as could the British
Museum, the Guggenheim and the Exploratorium.
The new generation of science centres know the value of working
from the beginning to build strong and productive brands.
Previously, it was seen as a necessary evil (and as a component
part of marketing), but new science destinations know that brand
building can and should sit at the centre of the organisation’s
strategic development. The brand should embody and express the
mission, and to the extent that visitor response (re)writes the brand,
the organisational vision should respond appropriately.
The Exploratorium in San Francisco has led the way for interactive
science centres since it was founded, and it has built a strong
local, national and now international brand over its 30-year history.
At-Bristol and W5 (at Odyssey, Belfast) are engaged in developing
similarly powerful and flexible brands.
The Exploratorium in San Francisco has built a strong,
local, national and now international brand
Science centres are often appealing to a core domestic market,
which can help to focus the development of their brands. The
choice of a science centre for a day out is influenced by a complex
relationship with its brand values in the same way that a purchase
of a Coke is. It is not just about providing an educational experience
for the kids. It is about providing an experience that excites them
in the same way as buying a pair of Nike trainers does. It is about
emotions felt prior to, during and after the visit, about what their
friends think of it, about the merchandise they can take home, and
so on. The visitor’s perception of the brand is ultimately expressed
through the stories they tell following a visit: stories that determine
whether there will be a return visit, whether the website will be
checked, whether the brand will be trusted to adorn Christmas gifts
or recommend a product.
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LOCUM DESTINATION R E V I E W
MISSION
BRAND
PRODUCT
VALUES
A strong brand becomes an extraordinarily powerful way of binding
all stakeholders into the mission of the organisation. It can be far
more effective than a mission statement pinned to the wall. No-one
needs to tell the staff what their company stands for, or what
it’s trying to achieve – it’s all in the brand. The brand is the most
powerful and effective expression of the mission statement.
Once consumers like and trust a brand, the possibilities for
exploiting it become much greater. A strong brand might enable
a science centre to open additional centres elsewhere, and make
it easier to secure funding. An intriguing recent example: in
partnership with one of the most valuable commercial brands, the
Exploratorium is planning a new science centre in China, Sony
ExploraScience.
Where else can a science centre brand go? The obvious extensions
are into merchandising, publishing, on-line activities, schools and
further education. A brand imbued with the visitor’s experience
of learning in a fun environment can be trusted to recommend
books and gifts and educational programmes. It can appear in shops
or on computer screens far removed from its physical home. It
could, in theory, authorise products that met certain criteria (e.g.
environmentally friendly washing powder, or cars). It could adorn a
chain of restaurants with interactive exhibits at every table. It could
open a theme park, or make movies, or start booking advance places
on holidays to the Moon. If Disney can do it…