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By Susan Wilkening
This article was published in Museum News, November/December issue of 2007.
Rosemary Krill has never had a reason to go to American Girl Place. Her son is in his 20s, and while she had been aware of American Girl for some time, the brand was not really on her radar screen. So when I invited her to join us on a tour of well-curated brand experiences along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping district, she hesitated. “What is a curated brand experience?” she asked. Would it be relevant to her work in education and visitor service at the Winterthur Museum? I assured her she would find the time well spent.
Krill’s epiphany came on the lower level of AGP, where historical settings behind glass depicted scenes in the “lives” of six American Girl dolls. “Look,” I said. “Period rooms.” She turned to me, a slightly stunned look on her face, and said, “Whoa.”
 | Whoa exactly. What are period room settings doing in a store in one of America’s premier shopping districts?
My colleague at Reach Advisors, James Chung, and I organized the tour to coax museum professionalsout of their regular frame of reference by examining how some of America’s leading brands work. | Photo courtesy of American Girl
Over two days in Chicago this May, during the annual meetings of both the Association of Children’s Museums and the American Association of Museums, we led 50 museum directors, educators, curators and marketing directors on tours of the Magnificent Mile. We explored four very different establishments—AGP, Starbucks, Apple and Fourth Presbyterian Church—met their managers and staff and discussed how these brands might offer fresh insight to bring home to museums.
Like a curator in a museum, the creators of these brands carefully select their design, products, programs and staffs to create experiences that ideally are unforgettable for their visitors. The goal is to provide experiences so powerful that visitors re turn for more, encourage their friends to join them and talk about it for years, perhaps decades. This work, just like a museum exhibit or program, takes a great deal of research, planning and flawless execution, as well as a thorough understanding of and integration with the local community.
It seems as if everybody is trying to attract audiences, or customers, through experiences. And considering the number of times the word “experience” popped out of the mouths of store managers, it was clear that our four stops were no different. But they were very different from typical establishments, and most museums, in how they implemented their brand experience. “All of them basically bludgeon you with their brand from the moment you arrive until you leave,” noted Darren Macfee, executive director of the Lincoln Children’s Museum (LCM).
Yet for these four brands, it works extraordinarily well. As Pauline Eversmann, retired deputy director for public programs at the Winterthur Museum, commented, “Any museum would kill to have such actively engaged visitors in an exhibition or on tour.” So what are the secrets for that engagement with the brand? A great deal of it has to do with the—you guessed it—experience that is embedded into the daily operations of each establishment. The three retailers we visited realize that by focusing on the experience in the store, they are positively affecting the bottom line.
For Apple, the experience begins the moment you espy the facade. The polished white stone is sleek, sharp and modern, with a big glass apple punched through it. Upon entering, you are drawn to a breathtaking glass stairway that dramatically pulls your eye upwards. The entire architectural experience has been likened by critics, customers and Apple followers to visiting a cathedral or shrine. A brand as a religious experience? Maybe.
Inside you also notice that there is not a lot of merchandise on display. Displays are simple and polished and allow customers to focus on the well-designed products, with or without the help of Apple staff. Though if you need help, staffers are everywhere, and to make themselves easy to find they all wear distinctive T-shirts and name badges—a point not lost on Macfee, who found the subconscious effect relevant for the Lincoln Children’s Museum. “It translates to a feeling of ‘They are very friendly and helpful; they care,’” he told me afterward. He is now in the process of ordering new shirts for all museum staff, including administrators.
Apple is savvy when it comes to hiring its front-line staff. It seeks out diverse individuals who are unique, smart, funny and passionate about the Apple brand. In all of our interactions with Apple staffers, we were blown away by their friendliness, their passion for the company and their knowledge about the products and the store. This became abundantly clear when we were greeted upon entering with two of the tours. While waiting for the store manager, both Colin and Rich wowed us with their friendliness and enthusiasm. They had no idea who we were or why we were there, yet they still delivered in a big way.
Remarkably, some 50 percent of the customer service experience at Apple is post-sale. At least a third of the sales floor is not a sales floor at all. A “Genius Bar,” manned by “geniuses,” provides hands-on technical support right there in the store. For free.
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Photo courtesy of Apple.
| Additionally, a small, open theater allows customers to learn more about their hardware, software and accessories through presentations and workshops held almost hourly. These programs are free because Apple realizes a happy user will return and tell others. The design may set the store apart, but it is the execution by staff that creates an extraordinary experience, keeping Apple customers hooked.
Starbucks also wants to keep customers hooked, primarily by making beverages and the experience of buying them part of a daily routine. But the Starbucks experience is all about coffee. While the company wants purchasing its beverages to be part of a daily ritual, the experience is also about the ritual of coffee consumption. Leading us through a tasting, store manager Chris Neil explained that the experience begins with the smell of the beans as you walk through the door, then leads to watching the barista carefully prepare your special brew and place it on a dramatically lit pedestal (as if it were a sculpture in a museum), followed by the smell and finally the taste of the coffee. Coffee is used as a vehicle to bring people together and into the Starbucks store, where comfy chairs await for socializing or working, making it an ideal third place (after home and work). That the Magnificent Mile store can succeed at this personal touch with two million transactions per year is remarkable.
As at Apple, the friendliness and enthusiasm of the staff at Starbucks were striking. As Neil noted, “We believe in making a connection with our customers and our community. An important part of creating the Starbucks experience is the opportunity to connect with our customers on the spot, starting conversations, creating relationships and asking questions—just getting to know customers as individuals.”
At Starbucks, sustainable grown coffee is used as a marketing tool. This did not go unnoticed by Macfee of the Lincoln Children’s Museum. “They could have just made the decision to use coffee grown through sustainable methods. . . . But they take it a step further and use it as part of their marketing.”
All museums have similar behind-the-scenes activities and measures that could be used to educate and enlighten the visitor. “We don’t give ourselves enough credit . . . By not talking about it, the perception on the part of our customers is that we’re not doing anything,” Macfee said. “This has been borne out through personal experience: A patron complains about our lax security, we explain everything that we do that they don’t even see, they do a 180-degree turn and end up complimenting us on the lengths we go to in ensuring their child’s safety.” Transparency in operations can turn complainers into converts.
Yet Starbucks has struggled to maintain positive brand experiences in all 13,000-plus outlets. Seeking efficiency, individual outlets have switched to automatic espresso machines, thereby removing much of the distinctive aroma. In a now infamous memo on the Starbucks Gossip blog in early 2007, Chairman Howard Schultz warned:
Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead [sic] to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.
It is tempting to keep stretching to accommodate perceived needs of customers of visitors, but as Schultz points out, not at the expense of the coffee. Mission creep and, in the case of Starbucks, exuberant expansion should never be at the expense of the experience visitors have come to expect.
At both Apple and Starbucks, participants in our tours were impressed by the lengths staff went to provide remarkable customer service. It made some think carefully about the customer service experience their museums were providing and what they could do to improve it. “The staffs exuded competence, positivity and were just fun to interact with. Their enthusiasm for their respective workplaces was contagious. I will definitely be keeping this in mind as we recruit new volunteers and staff for the museum’s reopening,” said Andrea Lowther, manager of visitor programs at the National Museum of American History, which closed for renovations in 2006. LeAnne Ruzzamenti, director of marketing at the Crocker Art Museum, agreed and was inspired to create a new visitor services manager position largely based on the models of Apple and Starbucks. What also contributed to Ruzzamenti’s decision were her experiences visiting three Chicago museums. Staff at different institutions ranged from “rude” to “tremendously wonderful” with three levels of personnel. When staff went the extra mile, as at the Chicago History Museum, she said, “What a difference it made!”
Yet providing an extraordinary customer experience is challenging, as we discovered this spring when Reach Advisors conducted a national study of children’s museum visitors for the Association of Children’s Museums. Out of nearly 5,500 parents and grandparents who visited or belonged to 33 children’s museums, only 12 percent said the staff “really cares about my family.” Twelve percent. Museums that excelled at customer service, however, tended to have happier visitors who were significantly more engaged with their museum and community.
Making customers feel special requires hiring for attitude, not aptitude. Training can instill the required skills, but it cannot instill passion. Hiring and retaining enthusiastic staff who have a commitment to providing visitors with the service they need to have an enjoyable experience are of utmost importance because they allow visitors to focus on the reasons they come to a museum in the first place—to learn, reflect and spend time with family and friends.
For Apple and Starbucks, excelling in customer service is only one part of their business strategy. Connecting with the community is key for gaining and retaining customers. The Michigan Avenue Apple Store serves the community by hosting nearly ten events each day and by providing meeting space to outside organizations. Starbucks also hosts events and works to integrate its stores into community life. And for our third tour stop, Fourth Presbyterian Church, becoming the community hub for young professionals and empty nesters moving back to Chicago has proven a smart strategic decision.
Photo by Barry Peterson.
| A church may be considered an unorthodox stop for a tour of some of America’s top brands, but this one has developed that reputation in Chicago. One participant immediately understood the brand link: “Hey, the church is the biggest [brand] of all of them.”
Fourth Church stands out from its peers as a mainline Protestant church that has a growing and youthful membership. With a stunningly low average member age—early 40s—its affluent and well-educated members are similar to typical museum visitors.As explained by Parish Associate Thomas Rook, attracting members is a low-key process utilizing community activities and extensivevolunteer opportunities that brings newmembers in “through the back door.”
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Fourth Church then benefits from an influx of new skills, energy and enthusiasm—advantages not lost on Ruzzamenti. “After hearing from Rev. Rook, it became clear to me that we are missing an opportunity to attract new audiences by limiting our volunteers to members only,” she said.
Fourth Church works hard to engage both members and nonmembers in volunteer opportunities, with nonmembers of many faiths (including Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and atheists) often outnumbering members. Partnering with more than 50 outside organizations, it helps recruit volunteers to tutor in the Cabrini Green housing project, read to the blind or even help “care for creation” by volunteering at the Lincoln Park Zoo or the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Other organizations are welcome to utilize the church for their activities, including other religious organizations. Meetings, prayer groups and other programs are constantly taking place, all helping make Fourth Church the hub of its community for individuals of all faiths.
This open approach strongly appeals to the church highly educated members. It also draws a steady stream of individuals who find themselves involved in a non-sectarian program and then become increasingly engaged with church activities. The ministerial staff maintains a similar tone in their traditional worship services; sermons are intellectually—not dogmatically—religious.
By focusing their work so intently on the greater community, the leaders of Fourth Church have made their house of worship a vital community hub. Even those who are not members are far more likely to say it is an important part of their community and worthy of support. So while Fourth Church provides resources and services to its community, the church itself is also gaining support.
We have found through our research that museums that strive to become community hubs have reaped numerous benefits as well. In our recent surveys of museums in New York, North Carolina and Ohio, we identified a number of museums that truly serve their communities in this capacity. When we asked the directors “What are the benefits of becoming a community hub?” all of them started ticking off a host of advantages, including greater visitation, audience diversity, increased membership, program income, local financial support and community relevance. Remarkable growth often came after focusing attention on community engagement, including community leadership roles for all staff—not just the director—an outreach effort to offer free meeting space to nonprofits and accelerating external partnerships in truly creative ways. For these museums, as at Fourth Church, focused community outreach has not only benefited the community but also their bottom lines.
While our first three stops focused on brands that create relationships through service and community, our last stop was a retailer that strives to create closer family bonds. American Girl has developed an extremely profitable business model that relies on the lessons of history to educate young girls while facilitating closer relationships between daughters, mothers and grandmothers.
In case you missed the phenomenon that is American Girl, here is a quick recap. Founded more than 20 years ago, this line of high-end dolls features the stories of 9-year-old girls from different periods in American history. From Kaya, a Nez Perce Indian girl from 1764, to Molly, who lives in 1944, these popular dolls are accompanied by a series of books, accessories and clothing (matching for dolls and their young owners).
The epitome of the American Girl experience for young girls is a visit to one of the three AGP flagship stores in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. (Smaller boutiques opened this year in Atlanta and Dallas.) For the mothers and grandmothers who accompany girls on their visits, it is an opportunity to bond during a trip down memory lane. A visit to AGP is much like a shopping trip from decades ago, when these women were young girls venturing downtown with their mothers and grandmothers to go to the department store (replete with red velour sofas), theaters, museums, beauty salons or tea rooms.
The historical themes of American Girl is most obvious on the lower level of the store, where a museum experience awaits, as Rosemary Krill found. Period rooms behind glass feature vignettes with different historical characters that change seasonally. Beyond these rooms is a theater, where daily performances reinforce the dolls’ stories. From there to the cafe or the salon you find girls and moms and sisters and grandmas all having a fantastic time in an environment designed to facilitate family bonding.
By making those family experiences central to AGP, American Girl ensures that moms and grandmas (and their wallets) are thoroughly engaged. It is a highly effective route to profitability; AGP is designed to get people talking, interacting and buying.
Today’s moms want to create lasting and memorable experiences that bring their families together. For many families, some of the most memorable moments at AGP are spent sitting in the cafe, awaiting their meal. At each table is a small box with slips of paper, each asking a leading question on such matters as childhood volunteer experiences, designed to create conversation about memories that connect mother and daughter. This low-budget box, called “Table Talk,” helps spark those lasting memories moms crave (and could easily be replicated at most museums).
The dolls themselves can also be used to create closer bonds. Many moms love to choose the Molly doll (nine years old in 1944) because Molly is about the same age Grandma was in 1944. Molly is something Grandma and granddaughter can have in common. Therefore it should be no surprise that the newest historical doll is Julie, who is nine in 1974—around the time when Mom was nine herself. Now mom and daughter can have Julie in common, too.
Pleasant Rowland, the founder of American Girl, was apt to describe American Girl products and experiences as “chocolate cake with vitamins.” It also is food for thought for museums. By turning history lessons into stories about nine-year-old girls, American Girl dolls and books enhance the learning of history by making it real. As girls read the books and play with their dolls, they are imagining themselves in those different time periods.
| American Girl dolls also celebrate the diverse history of America. While most of the historical dolls are Caucasian, Kaya (1764) is Nez Perce Indian, Addy (1864) is African American and Josefina (1824) is Hispanic.Interestingly, these dolls are just as popular with Caucasian girls as the other dolls. AGP also delves into some of the more difficult issues of American history, such as westward expansion and slavery.By creating a range of dolls representative of America and by hiring a diverse staff, AGP has become a destination for all races, ethnicities and cultures. | 
Photo courtesy of American Girl.
| Multiculturalism and inclusion have become highly profitable.
Why is it that AGP is so successful in bringing families together and serving up lessons from the past while many history museums and historic sites struggle with declining attendance?
Like most museums, American Girl conducts historical research to ensure that its stories, dolls and accessories are accurate. But research is just a supporting device to tell the story of a character. Twenty-two years ago, Ellen Rosenthal, now executive director of Conner Prairie Living History Museum, consulted for American Girl. Working with American Girl, she discovered, required a different mindset. “In response to my harping on historical detail (I was young and rigid at the time), [a Samantha book writer] wrote, ‘In case you’re ever involved in a project like this again, the history only works as the background for a story, not as the story itself.’ I’ve taken her words to heart in my work.” And that is the key difference between American Girl interpretation and that of most history museums and historic sites. The chocolate cake—the story—is still about the nine-year-old that young girls relate to so well, while the vitamins—the history—are the background details that fortify the story.
So the question for historic sites and history museums is, how can accounts of the past be turned into stories that children and adults relate to as easily as they do to these dolls and their stories? It is a huge challenge for museums to tackle, but American Girl can be a source of inspiration.
For many of our participants, touring Chicago’s Magnificent Mile was an opportunity to step outside of their comfort zones and develop fresh insights into how others leverage customer service and community relations to deliver results. You do not have to hop a plane to Chicago to do likewise. Find out what makes your community tick and what other experiences your visitors are having. What expectations are they developing, and is your museum fulfilling those expectations? Grab a few colleagues (and perhaps their children as well), get out of the museum and take a field trip of brand experiences in your backyard.
By learning more about the influences that shape what your visitors expect and want from you, you’ll build your relevance and create a memorable experience that enables your visitors to focus on your core work: sharing history, art, science, nature and people with your audiences. Besides, turnabout is fair play: The general manager of American Girl Place takes his staff to museums to shop for ideas, too. Susan Wilkening is a consultant with Reach Advisors, an audience strategy and research firm serving community-driven enterprises. On Nov. 27 Wilkening and Darren Macfee, executive director of the Lincoln Children’s Museum, will co-host a free conference-call roundtable discussion on lessons learned from the Magnificent Mile. To participate, e-mail Wilkening at susie@reachadvisors.com. |
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