How To Make Your Marketing Message Memorable

► Event Marketing

The Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Birthday Party Provides Lessons You Can Use

Considered one of the top New York City museums, The Brooklyn Museum celebrates its 200th Birthday this year. Incorporated in 1824, it started as The Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library Association and later became Brooklyn’s first public circulating library before transforming into The Brooklyn Museum.

The Brooklyn Museum Rebrands For Its Bicentennial

The Brooklyn Museum’s new brand approach combines aspects from its past with its current contemporary perspective. Reflecting its dynamic, vibrant audience, the new logo reflects the Museum’s global and local position.

The new logo uses a Sans Serif typeface and ligatures to express the Museum’s diverse elements. Inspired by the dots on the building’s facade that frame the names of ancient philosophers, playwrights, and poets, they bookend the logo.

Wherever the logo is used, the dots appear at least twice representing the two O’s in Brooklyn. Also, the Museum merges the two O’s in Brooklyn and the M’s and U’s in the word Museum. To extend the new branding, they can be used in motion graphics, text bullets or functional signage.

New Brooklyn Museum Logo with too dots

Actionable Rebranding Tips

• Research past representations of the brand and other elements of the business. Provide continuity so your audience recognizes your brand. Where possible, get input from your audience and customers. We did this when I worked at The Economist.
• Update or create brand guidelines. Make them available across your organization, suppliers, distributors and various agencies.
• Explain your rebrand to your audience. Don’t lose prospects or customers because they don’t recognize your new look and feel.

Brooklyn Museum 200th Birthday Bash

To celebrate its 200th Birthday Bash, The Museum offered a packed schedule of art, live music, curator talks, poetry readings and craft workshops on October 5th and 6th. The planners represented their diverse audience. Even better, it was free with advance tickets (which sold out! Luckily, I got tickets to attend with my husband.)

We enjoyed the variety of musical options!

In addition to awards from various borough politicians, there was a massive birthday cheesecake made by Juniors, the iconic Brooklyn bakery. Attendees got miniature cake bites. (When I was an undergraduate at McGill University, the Christmas edition of the student newspaper reviewed Junior’s and gave driving directions from Montreal to Brooklyn.)

Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Birthday Cheesecake by Juniors

Actionable Event Marketing Tips

• Recognize your organization’s key staff and board members. At the cake presentation ceremony, the volunteers wore fun hats with black t-shirts.
• Sell sponsorships. For example, one of The Brooklyn Museum’s main sponsors was Bank of America.
• Get local government support and involvement. Local politicians showed up and gave honorary certificates to the Museum.
• Promote your event across media entities owned and paid. Include your house email file and social media. I found out about the event since I’m on their email list.
• Provide selling spaces for outside entities. The Brooklyn Museum offered space to both local artisans and food trucks. While I don’t know whether these merchants paid to rent their space, I recommend you consider doing so.

► Market Messaging

Why Your Marketing Message Must Be Repeated

Former President Trump’s repeated false claims about federal aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Hurricane Milton in Florida have hindered governmental response to help people in catastrophic situations.

Since Trump continues to say the same thing again and again at rallies, on social media and in interviews, his audience believes his misinformation. This has resulted in a massive increase in rumors online.

As marketers, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Why?

Because we place consistent marketing messages in the form of content marketing and advertising across owned and paid media platforms based on audience preferences.

Due to the false information Trump initiated and spreads, Republican officials in these states have very real problems keeping their constituents and FEMA workers safe from threats of harm. To combat the former president’s falsehoods, they have spoken out across a variety of media outlets to convince their constituents that the situation is critical and the federal government, namely FEMA, has sent help.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

Memory experiments in 1885 by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus found that individuals forget “just learned” information very fast. The results revealed that the percentage of information forgotten formed an exponential curve. After an hour, people remembered 45% of what they learned. (Source: Taalhammer.com, April 4, 2024)

Translation: Your marketing message requires repeated exposure, often 5 to 8 times, to get your audience to remember it. This concept has remained consistent since I was in business school.

Actionable Marketing Messaging Tips

• Check how competitors represent and/or position your brand. Have a consistent brand strategy across your organization.
• Take immediate action to correct false and/or misleading information regardless where it appears or is heard. For political elections, a specialized form of marketing, this is especially important in the current social media environment. These platforms make it free and easy to spread bad information and stir up extremists.
• Increase paid advertising and PR outreach to provide your brand’s point of view. This translates to increased marketing spend and media outreach to platforms to which your target audience pays attention.
• Use trusted brand spokespeople aligned with your brand. This expands your exposure to key audiences faster. Also, they offer an implied endorsement.For example, Former President Obama is speaking for Kamala Harris. He can say things she can’t as Vice President. Also, he can explain how Trump inherited his administration’s good economy; how Trump overturned Roe versus Wade by adding three Supreme Court justices; and why he supports Harris from a man’s perspective.

► Writing & Reading

How To Improve Your Writing By Reading Widely

To improve my writing and be influenced by established authors, I made good use of the New York Public Library and the beloved Strand Bookstore on Broadway and East 12th Street, an independent bookstore that sells new and used books.

After reading a book for pleasure, especially fiction, I re-read it a second time to understand the author’s writing techniques such as character development, plot, story architecture and themes. To help my writing, I made notes with post-its, on-page notes (for books I owned,) and notes on paper. For Kindle books, I used their notetaking function.

Actionable Reading Tips

• Make it easy to read more. Always have a book available as a physical book, on a device (such as a Kindle, tablet or mobile phone) and/or an audio version. This enables you to make use of otherwise lost time by reading while you wait or commute.
• Develop a reading habit. Consciously make time to read every day.
• Always have another book to read. Keep a list or pile of books you want to read. To discover new books, ask people you know for recommendations. Also, visit physical libraries and bookstores. Seeing a physical book and paging through it influences you differently from online options. Read columns about books, newsletters that recommend books, and lists of prize-winning books.
• Set reading goals. Avoid the January resolution slump by deciding to increase the number of books you read per week, per month or per year. These books can focus on marketing, writing, fiction or another topic. Many marketers underestimate the power of reading fiction to improve their content marketing and broader knowledge.
• Join a book club. Reading a book with a group of people allows you to understand other people’s perspectives. If it’s an in-person book club, you get the additional social experience. BTW, The New York Public Library has a number of book club options, some of which take place online.
• Track your reading. As the saying goes, “What gets tracked gets done!” This helps you to keep track of what books you’ve read.

Thank you for your attention and continued readership. It means a lot to me.