Print marketing for museums and galleries
Museum marketing print distribution places exhibition leaflets and posters where local audiences already stand: letterboxes, shop windows, cafes and brochure racks. iDO (Info Display OOH Ltd) distributes more than 5 million brochures every month across 150,000 print points, the biggest print distribution network in the UK, and ran the ultra local Design Museum membership campaign in Kensington.
Sugandan Balaji
What is museum marketing print distribution?
Museum marketing print distribution is a media service that puts a museum's printed leaflets and posters into homes, shop windows and brochure racks inside a named catchment. For a museum or gallery it does the job a national ad cannot: it reaches the streets that actually supply visitors, members and school groups.
iDO (Info Display OOH Ltd), founded in 1997, distributes more than 5 million brochures every month across 150,000 print points, the biggest print distribution network in the UK, served by 60+ distribution centres with teams local to their own areas. Museum and gallery clients include the Design Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Museum of London, the National Trust and English Heritage.
How did the Design Museum membership campaign work?
The Design Museum membership campaign combined solus door to door delivery in the W8 6 postcode sector with an ultra local poster and leaflet blanket of Kensington High Street, Earls Court Road and Notting Hill Gate. It produced a spike in membership applications.
Solus means the Design Museum leaflet was delivered on its own, with no other advertiser's print in the same drop, so it arrived as a letter rather than as part of a bundle. The blanket then repeated the same message on the three shopping streets those households walk every week. Membership is a local product, bought by people who live close enough to return, so a tight geography beats a wide one.
Which print formats suit an exhibition launch?
For a museum exhibition launch, use a DL or A5 leaflet for the household drop and rack, and A4 or A3 posters for the shops, cafes and community sites around the museum. Print leaflets on 130gsm to 170gsm silk: below 130gsm the leaflet creases in the letterbox, above 170gsm the cost of every drop rises.
| Format | Size | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| DL leaflet | 99mm x 210mm | Brochure racks, hotel foyers, door drops |
| A5 leaflet | 148mm x 210mm | Door to door, hand to hand, information centres |
| A4 poster | 210mm x 297mm | Cafes, libraries, community boards |
| A3 poster | 297mm x 420mm | Retail and food and drink windows |
| 6 sheet poster | 1200mm x 1800mm | Retail and roadside panels |
How do museums reach schools, families and the local community?
Museums reach schools, families and the local community through ultra local distribution: every retail, food and drink, supermarket, community and heritage site in the town, plus household drops on the residential streets behind them. Trestle Theatre in St Albans used exactly that blanket and the performance was oversubscribed.
Hand to hand distribution adds a second layer for a museum, because it puts the leaflet in the hand of a self selecting cultural audience. The Imperial War Museum and the Churchill War Rooms distributed hand to hand outside the Royal Albert Hall on the Last Night of the Proms.
- Primary and secondary schools, for term time group bookings
- Libraries, leisure centres and community halls
- Cafes, delis and independent retail near the museum
- Hotels and information centres, for visiting families
- Digital screens in barbershops, gyms, pubs and bars, around 500,000 impressions a week
How does a museum prove the print was delivered?
Ask for GPS tracked distribution and photographed proof of display before booking. iDO has invested over £250,000 in a reporting system that GPS tracks each distribution run, photographs posters in the window and publishes both to a live dashboard with geo located maps, so a museum can check a street while the exhibition is still open.
Speed is the other test. For the Royal Albert Hall Christmas booker campaign, iDO started within 2 days of the tier two announcement, delivering 6,600 solus door to door addresses across SW7 1 to SW7 5 plus 300 first class direct mail items.
Frequently asked
- How many households should a museum membership campaign cover?
- Fewer than most museums expect. The Design Museum membership campaign worked a single postcode sector, W8 6, plus three named shopping streets. Membership is bought by people who live close enough to return often, so depth inside a small catchment beats a thin spread across a city.
- How far ahead of an exhibition should print go out?
- Book the distribution cycle so leaflets land two to three weeks before opening and posters go up in the same week, then run a second cycle mid run. iDO can move faster when needed: the Royal Albert Hall campaign started within 2 days of the announcement.
- Do posters and leaflets still work for galleries?
- Yes, where the audience is geographic. A gallery draws from the streets around it, so print placed in those windows and letterboxes reaches the right people without paying for waste. iDO holds 150,000 print points across the UK, the biggest print distribution network in the UK.