The Palace Museum——Not Merely a Museum Anymore

Earned CNY1.5 billion (USD222 million) two years ago thanks to culturally innovative products, the Palace Museum received record attendance with 16.7 million visitors and officially overtook the Louvre as the most visited art institution in the world. Despite the positive outlook, the Forbidden City and the Palace Museum are continuing to look for ways to promote themselves not as just a tourist destination, but as a distinct brand of its own.

Since revitalizing its brand image through introducing new lines of quirky and humorous Wenchuang “文创” products (peripheral products) and distributing them on its online store on Taobao, it has enjoyed major success. As a significant symbol of Chinese culture and heritage, it is perhaps one of the most organic and distinct sources of inspiration to have ever been used to create not only a brand, but also the surrounding intellectual property (IP) associated with it. So what can we learn from its marketing success

Multiple Sales Channels

Online Channels

The online product sales channels are mainly divided into three ways, namely the Forbidden City Mall, the Forbidden City Taobao Store and the Palace Museum Tmall Flagship Store.

The Forbidden City Mall sells more traditional tourist goods, such as postcards, mascots, and notebooks printed with the cultural elements of the Forbidden City. However, the Forbidden City Taobao store is mainly engaged in smart and lively styles of peripheral products, such as the Cold Palace refrigerator stickers, Granny Rong sewing box and so on. The Palace Museum Tmall flagship store contains three sections: Wenchuang boutique, the Forbidden City publishing, and the Forbidden City ticketing. Wenchuang Boutique combines the Forbidden City culture with life aesthetics and contemporary life through creative design techniques, emphasizing more cultural and artistic heritage than the Forbidden City Taobao; The publication selects the best products from the all Forbidden City publications for sale; the Palace Tickets cooperates with Alibaba to establish a ticket online pre-sale reservation system, and visitors can quickly check in through QR code and second-generation ID card.

Offline Channel

The Forbidden City Cultural and Creative Museum is the main offline sales channel of the Palace Museum. It is divided into eight different exhibition halls, such as the Silk Pavilion, the Clothing Pavilion, the Living Hall and the Image Gallery. Visitors can not only experience the Qing Palace, but also bring the cultural creative products back to home. The development of this museum reflects the overall transformation of the Forbidden City from the “souvenir” to the “cultural creative product”

2. Online Marketing

There are three main marketing channels for the Palace Museum: Weibo, WeChat public account, and APP platform. Using the approachable image to break the serious impression the Forbidden City, these platforms let the Palace Museum sprout new vitality, and attract fans to actively participate in the spread of the Forbidden City culture. Compared with the original news and advertisements, the social media content seems much more impersonal.

The Forbidden City Weibo is an official account that serves the promotion of the Forbidden City culture and its products. In the early days of its opening, the account posted mostly popular science and promotion articles with only tens to hundreds of reading and reposting. Then in 2015, it began to change its mindset and released marketing advertorials with popular phrases and current topics, and the number of fans and reposts skyrocketed, also the market. The WeChat official account complements the Forbidden City’s Weibo and uses the circle of friends for cultural exchanges and diffusion.

The development of a series of Apps has realized the innovative spread of the Forbidden City culture. The first App of the Forbidden City was the “People’s Figure” on the iPad in 2013. The beautiful screen of Yongzheng Emperor is divided into 12 beautiful pictures. The furniture, books and costumes in the painting can be enlarged and read to discover the underlying machine. This App was rewarded as “China’s Excellent APP” in 2013. In addition, there are well-made “Han Xi Zai Night Banquet” and “Daily Palace”, which won the 2015 “Best APP of the Year” and “Excellent APP of the Year” respectively.

3. Current Trend Sensitive

Taking advantage of the online current events has become an effective network marketing method to increase social attention. In January 2015, the marriage news of Wu Qilong and Liu Shishi (both are top tier Chinese actor and actress) boarded the popular microblogging list. A week later, the official WeChat account of Forbidden City Taobao launched an article “She is even busier than Si Ye”, which was actually a product promotion article. It quickly triggered a reading of 100,000+ users and was reposted by the People’s Daily and a large number of netizens; In March, the robot Baymax in the movie “Big Hero 6” became really popular, and the Forbidden City immediately launched the “Baymax” version of Emperor” HD illustration wallpaper.

It can be said that the glory of the Forbidden City derives from the accumulation of thousands of years Chinese history. The combination of new media and cultural creative products help the younger generation to better accept the culture. Even so, getting attention by creating cute version of the history figures is not a long-term road, nor is it the only way. The same product design pattern or marketing method is easy for consumers to produce aesthetic fatigue.

In the future, more and more Wenchuang products will appear. How can we retain this sense of weight and awe, and let more and more ordinary people become aware of and fall in love with cultural products? Shan Yuxiang, the director of the Palace Museum, said: The museum should develop cultural and creative products by studying people’s lives and understanding their cultural resources thoroughly. The number of cultural and creative products developed by the Forbidden City has reached more than 9,000, and now it is changing from quantity growth to quality improvement.