Was This A Marketing Opportunity?

Hello. Hope you’ve had a good weekend.

In the newspaper on the weekend I read about a hoax painting displayed at the British Museum for a few days. Apparently a well-known “art terrorist” (called Banksy) had placed a painting of a caveman pushing a supermarket trolley. It was titled “Early Man Goes To Market”.

The painting was stuck on the wall with double-sided tape in a gallery of artifacts from Roman Britain.

Banksy then bragged about it on his web site, the painting was quickly identified and removed.

2 Aspects Here

1. I’m in Australia and I have now heard of the British Museum and their art exhibitions. That’s good for the Museum.

2. If the Museum staff had of left the painting up I can just about guarantee that their visitor numbers would have reached record levels for that exhibition as people came in to take a look at the fake piece.

Opportunities Galore

And then the Museum could have invited Banksy in, maybe had a debate about the merits of ‘guerrilla’ art like this and generally examined the artwork for it’s artistic merit, etc.

Maybe interview the artist for their inhouse magazine (if they have one), do an online audio interview for their web site, develop a series of promotional posters based on the fake artwork….the list goes on.

This was/is a tremendous opportunity for the Museum to generate huge amounts of interest. I guess it’s a case of ensuring the ‘fit’ is right – maybe with a guy who’s been described as an ‘Art Terrorist’ the fit isn’t quite right, but it would be worth considering.