Kate Trgovac has the inside scoop on how a ready-to-launch blog at the Royal Ontario Museum was deep-sixed by the marketing powers that be.
It was to have it all. Behind the scenes reports from curators. Advance notice of exclusive events. Insight into the Renaissance ROM project. Inside scoop on visiting exhibits. Kept up to date and written, not by a PR or a marketing firm, but by enthusiastic employees and volunteers who want to share their passion for the collection and the institution that is the ROM (the Royal Ontario Museum – for you non-Canadians – our equivalent of the Met in NYC).
The idea was germinated by two young enterprising professionals in the ROM Foundation..
And then …. old-school marketing struck.
Usually, when good ideas die, they do so silently and moulder in unmarked graves. Not so with this one: Kate has, with the author’s permission, posted what would have been the inaugural post. You can judge it for yourself; I found it electric. (As a side note, we need a Technorati tag to identify the occupants of the Good Ideas Cemetery. Suggestions are welcome.)
No doubt old-school marketing has its own side of this story to tell. But here’s one of two ironies in this story: old-school marketing will never get to tell it, precisely because old-school marketing sees this kind of transparency roughly the same way that vampires see garlic.
Oh, and the second irony? That all of this is taking place at an institution dedicated to preserving artifacts of the distant, dusty past.
