Introduction

“The Forbidden City” located in Beijing China, a magnificent and mysterious imperial court in ancient China from the Ming Dynasty (1368 AC ~1644 AC) to the end of Qing Dynasty (1644 AC ~ 1911 AC) with more than 600 years history (HISTORY.COM, 2018). It is listed by united nation educational; scientific and cultural organization (UNESCO) as the largest collection of preserved antiquity wooden structures in the world (UNESCO, 2004). Also named as “the imperial city” or most famously “the Palace Museum” to many tourists, the historical venue had been declared as the World Heritage Site since 1987, which has to accommodate around average 50,000 people of visitors every day, and being ranked as the top one most visited museum in the world for many years (The Palace Musuem, 2013).

Nowadays, the palace museum is considered to be more than just a historical relics for tourists, whereas the brand itself has become an intellectual property which is capable of generating massive profit for the museum, and had helped it to establish a strong brand recognition. The objective of the following report is to identify and appraise many of its strategies adopted by the management for achieving such an outstanding result and explore possible enrichment for its future development.

Brand Analysis

One of the great successes that The Palace Museum has made in the recent years is the fact that it has turned a conventional impression of a dull and old fashioned ancient museum into an eye-catching; vibrant and fascinating cultural image, especially amongst the younger age group with much more exposure to the western culture since they were a child compare to what their parents have normally had with the traditional Chinese culture, as the attention has been re-directed to many of its thematic side line product.

Astonishingly, the yearly revenue generated by the online sales of “forbidden city” thematic souvenir had reached 150 million US dollar equivalent in 2017, according to the data disclosed by “Taobao”, referred as the eBay in China, which is the largest Chinese online shopping platform in terms of its overall transection, in which The Palace Museum had officially launched its online-shop since a few years ago, and sells ranges of products including thematic silk and ceramic ornament; toys; daily use accessories; stationery, furniture and innovative handcraft across more than hundreds of categories. As a purpose for targeting the young people market, the management had actively approached to the artistic designers generally from the best arts school in China, and proposed a cooperative model which allowed those designers borrowing the concept of imperial court and its associated roles and characters which are the cultural elements originated from its ancient history.

Hence the creativity was well blended with the traditional culture, as its targeted audience or users representing a new generation of people who are much more life-style orientated, and fashionable, for whose perspectives the product value had well matched, then the injection of more interactive and adorable factor into the product style are the ultimate catch for customer purchase.

These products placed only in The Palace Museum online shop and managed directly by the museum has experienced an explosive increase of popularity from the general public, by the end of 2018, it had attracted more 500,000 online followers according to its official “Taobao” page. It had also launched its online social media channel namely “Wechat page”, which actively interacts with its subscribers by consistently delivering quality content and most of the time attracted more than 100,000 viewer , in July 2016, an online video clip using H5 technology[ H5: short for HTML5, type of web language for playing media on mobile phone] featuring a Chinese ancient emperor performing modern Rap, his concubine wearing Virtual Reality goggles, and the minster doing online chat on the computer spreading the imperial court rumor, had lighten up the online public frenzy and quickly became a phenomenal commercial campaign, which obtained over 3.47 million times of viewer click (“Emperor back to the future “, 2017).

If one could say that the online marketing initiative carried out by The Palace Museum management as a product promotion strategy was just a success by chance, then the offline marketing program offered in order to amplify the traditional cultural influence across the whole country in China which subsequently turned out to be another prevailing event could make people finally realize what a fantastic job that the marketing team had done.

Since 2018, The Palace Museum has launched several pop-up shops in Beijing and Shanghai usually last about a week during a period of festival time such as Chinese New Year, of which its purpose was to establish a shopping environment with fit-out and decoration imitating what it looks like in the real Palace Museum, especially featuring its color of vermillion; bright yellow and stone blue. The shop site was intentionally selected at one of the busiest shopping mall complex in the heart of the city and ensuring maximized traffic flow. Combined with a festival atmosphere, the pop-up shop has become an ideal place for people coming to check in on their social media account, and in the meantime to shop around for its associated products, also as an opportunity for people who do not usually browse online to experience the transformation of The Palace Museum creative concept.

The pop-up shop itself is an advantageous tool to catch people’s eye ball with its sudden pop-up effect, the limited time of opening also creates a feeling of urgency to make people not wanting to miss out the event, and the relatively low setup cost compare to a conventional off-line shop in the mall, also significantly reduce the burden for the organizer. The occasional event had made another surprising achievement as some of its most popular products already being sold out on the second day of opening. There were positive comments explicitly stated out that the trial of a Palace Museum pop-shop has brought the cultural heritage into people’s daily life, and allowed general public to experience the beauty of its culture through ordinary recreation. In addition, the event has also contributed to the promotion of its traditional culture through cultural experience.

Both the online and offline marketing initiatives are said to be creative measures carried out by The Palace Museum for conducting a culture transformation to blend traditional and old-fashioned element with intrigued creativity in order to broaden its target market for the young generation, as the brand awareness needs to be consistently passed down. However either the side-line product or the pop-up shop strategy is merely a basic marketing measure that could only help to boost the sales in short term, as in long run no body is able to guarantee this frenzy will remain forever when peoples interest gradually fade out, therefore there is something with more value and nobility that might possibly elicit people’s self-esteem in cultural perspective need to be proposed in order to enhance its brand image and to acknowledge its value of existence.

In 2018, the Palace Museum had partnered up with CCTV, the government owned and the largest broadcasting network in China, to produce a mixture of documentary and entertainment program namely “National Treasure” (CCTV, 2018) promoting traditional culture as a core value in a creative expression. Along with The Palace Museum, there were another eight national museums across the country, from which three pieces of unique historical relics were selected specifically recommended by each museum respectively to best represent the cultural element at a particular historical time, and then one celebrity or opinion influencer were invited to recount the cultural and historical background for each relics during the program supported by a show of stage play, which received enormous amount of viewers and positive feedback.

The program also actively provided audience interaction by inviting the general public voting for their most preferable relics. The program features a well history story telling with an aim to help the audience to appraise the beauty of relics, understanding the spiritual core value of civilization, advocating people to protect the relics. The Palace Museum again became a hot topic amongst audience this time with an even wider coverage in terms of scale, as through the camera angle, there are more people who are able to witness the relics which they normally would only have to see in person at the “Forbidden City”, and instantly established connection between people and the relics, this in turn further enhance its brand image.

Brand Enhancement

Without doubt, “The Palace Museum” has done such an amazing job in promoting its brand through various marketing initiatives, however upon till today, it has been only focusing on its domestic market, of which its traditional culture was once a while being ignored which caused much concerns from the experts, the propaganda of the “Palace Museum” brand image has been seen as an important move to promulgate its affluent cultural value not only to its own people, but also to people with other cultural background as a whole of civilization. Hence there are many other options available for it to duplicate its success in a much large scale with international exposure.

International pop-up shop
The pop-up shop concept could as well be implemented in many other venues around world, for example at places where Chinese immigrant were usually prevailed in a specific community such as the China town in Sydney Australia or in Vancouver Canada, where during the festival season not only the overseas Chinese get the opportunity to see it, but also for people with different cultural background also being able to immense themselves within the atmosphere, which in turn helps to enhance its brand recognition at overseas.

Thematic blockbuster
The management could also attempt to approach the Hollywood film maker discussing possible cooperation for producing a blockbuster movie with a background setting at the Forbidden City possibly tracing back to its ancient imperial dynasty. “The Great Wall” has recently been released as an offering in the blockbuster, but received few positive feedback from international market, possibly due to the difficulty for the western audience to understand its history and culture. So the producer should pay a lot attention when select the script which should be easier for the international audience to fast catch the point it tries to deliver, or at least in a way of gradually raising up an unfamiliar cultural issues.

Recommendation

For cost-effective purpose, it is recommended that the management should take a more conservative approach by going overseas with a strategic method, along with setting up a pop-up shop in a foreign country for selling side-line products, an educational initiative should also be taken for allowing the international audience to get to know the history and the culture associated with the brand, for example preparing pamphlet or giving presentation by telling little story of the history first before actually selling the product. In that way, people will appreciate the knowledge obtained that they might have not had chances to be exposed previously, this in turn again creates a deeper impression of the brand image and further enriches the development of the brand in the international market.