Communications of the National Museum
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Media
In 2018, the National Museum purposefully promoted its events and exhibitions in the media. Six press conferences and nine guided tours for journalists took place in the buildings of the National Museum, and sixty press releases were distributed, presenting exhibitions, events and other activities of the National Museum. The museum continued its close cooperation with its media partners, Czech Radio and Czech Television, and established cooperation with other media in the form of media partnerships for individual exhibitions and projects.
In 2018, in connection with the activities of the National Museum, the most communicated topics related to the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the National Museum and the planned partial opening of the reconstructed Historical Building of the National Museum. Of course, the opening of the new National Museum exhibitions “Celts” in the New Building and “A Century of Czech Tramping” in the Ethnographic Museum were also promoted. In term of media, the exhibition “Celts” was very successful; the media covered it extensively.
The National Museum on web and social media
In 2018, the communication strategy was defined primarily with regard to the improvement of the presentation of the National Museum on social media, which were paid the greatest attention, including by the creation of corresponding content.
For example, for the purpose of commemorating the 50th anniversary of August 1968, original videos were created that focused on this event as experienced by former employees of the museum who were at work that day. The videos gained enormous popularity, reaching over 120,000 people. They were shown as part of a commemoration event held by Czech Radio on Wenceslas Square.
A new website was launched in autumn 2018 whose quality has been confirmed by the consistently high website traffic, which has increased by about 100%.
Promotion of the National Museum
The 200th anniversary of the foundation of the National Museum and the 100th anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia became the leitmotif of the year. During the anniversary year, the museum used a special logo on its documents, adapted for this occasion. In addition to the standard way of promotion exhibitions, the individual events of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the National Museum were publicized. A visual style and communication a campaign were created for them, with the aim of reminding visitors about the buildings outside the museum complex on Wenceslas Square and showing the museum in a different light than that seen by an exhibition visitor.
Celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the National Museum
The celebrations of the National Museum’s anniversary started symbolically on 15. 4. 2018 with the "weekend of open museums“. Under the slogan "We have been learning about the world for two 200 years! Come and learn about us!” all the National Museum’s buildings were opened to the public, with a programme that allowed the visitors to see the work of the museum behind the scenes. The campaign continued with thematic events in the individual buildings throughout the year, culminating in the partial reopening of the Historical Building of the National Museum on the day of the 100th anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia. The opening of the Historical Building of the National Museum after many years of reconstruction was the key event of the year.
Promotion of educational activities
In 2018, the National Museum also focused on the promotion of educational activities, not only for families with children and schools, but also for adults. We continued to publish and distribute newsletters for all three of these categories, with a change in the concept of the printed material itself. A catalogue of educational programs, “With School”, was published for schools, summarizing the offer of educational programmes. Newsletters with accompanying programmes were issued in one version, which worked as a two-monthly calendar of events organized by the National Museum in its buildings.
Attendance
Compared to 2017, the National Museum buildings recorded another y-o-y increase in the number of visitor of approximately 325,000 people. The increased attendance numbers were greatly aided by the reopening of the Historical Building of the National Museum in October 2018, when the visitors were offered free admission for the rest of the year. The other museum buildings in Prague also saw an increase in the number of visitors, with the New Building of the National Museum having the greatest share (after the Historical Building). Here, in addition to the already running exhibitions “Noah’s Ark” and “Light and Life”, the exhibition “The Celts" opened. The Náprstek Museum also contributed to the greater attendance with its very popular exhibition "Indians", increasing the number of visitors to this institution to double that of 2017. The number of visitors to the National Memorial on Vítkov Hill increased by almost 5,000, thanks to exhibitions devoted to commemorating 1968. The exhibition “A Century of Tramping” in the Ethnographic Museum of the National Museum was also very popular.
A marketing campaign ran throughout the year to mark the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the National Museum's foundation, thanks to which the awareness of the National Museum’s buildings increased, greatly contributing to the higher attendance.