Marketing Review & Recommendations for the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum

Assuming a prominent position on Bournemouth’s East Cliff, the Russell-Cotes is a fascinating historic house, art gallery and museum overlooking one of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions: Bournemouth Beach. We were asked by the team at the Russell-Cotes to carry out a marketing review and provide recommendations to help them elevate the impact of the Museum's marketing activity to heights akin to its cliff top position.

Despite its exquisite collections and prominent position in a popular tourist destination, the Russell-Cotes typically has not been at the top of Bournemouth’s ‘places to visit’ lists.

With a programme of internal and external stakeholder consultation, primary market research, and a detailed review of the organisation’s marketing activity, we identified some of the barriers to engagement with potential and returning visitors.

From our research and review, a simple yet ambitious vision for the Russell-Cotes’ marketing activity was born centred around becoming a much more outward-looking organisation with collaboration and partnership at its core.

With a prize of increased visitor footfall and income and an enhanced profile, our recommendations focused upon three main areas:

  • Developing a clear market focus and positioning – identifying priority markets and positioning itself to resonate emotionally and meaningfully with them.
  • Redistributing marketing budget and focus – a fresh approach centred around achieving more, not doing more
  • Working collaboratively and in partnership with others – unlocking opportunities to widen reach

Our review and recommendations were welcomed by the team. And we were thrilled to be invited back the following year to offer a programme of mentoring to help the Museum take some of the more complex areas of recommendation forward.

(images courtesy of The Russell-Cotes)

““Russell-Cotes has an amazing offer, we can help them do more with it locally and nationally.”
Taken from consultation with external partners