One of the interesting ideas to come out of the MuseumNext workshops that we ran last week came from Ferry Piekart of NAi in the Netherlands. He was trying to create a buzz around an exhibition and his conclusion was to create a marketing campaign that suggested a mystery existed, and that not knowing what the campaign was about would keep the buzz going.
In the paper this morning I noticed something similar. ‘Is this the man of your dreams’ the headline reads before outlining the story of a new website trying to trace a mysterious man who has ‘appeared in hundreds of peoples dreams’.
The story below comes from The Metro Newspaper:
The site says the story began in a New York psychiatrist’s office in January 2006. A patient drew the face of a man that had been giving her advice in recurring dreams.
The portrait was later seen by another patient, who also claimed the man had visited him in his dreams, prompting the psychiatrist to send the portrait to colleagues with patients who had recurrent dreams.
According to the website, other patients recognised the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams, each referring to him as ‘this man’.
Testimonies, allegedly from around the world, are presented online. Each describes different ways in which ‘this man’ has appeared to them.
One dreamer wrote: ‘I dreamt this man was in my mirror watching me, saying nothing, and he was wearing glasses. He never moved the entire time I saw him, he was like a statue, so still.’
The site offers a variety of inscrutable theories to explain the ‘appearances’, citing Jung’s psychoanalysis and pseudo-religious mysticism. The writers even suggest it may represent someone who has the ability to ’surf through dreams’.
However, the site was registered in January 2008 by Andrea Natella, founder of an Italian guerilla marketing agency, known for campaigns such as ‘Shock And Hoax’.
The question remains as to what exactly the agency is promoting.
Of course museums have used this kind of intrigue to market exhibitions. Last year the V&A ran a successful word of mouth campaign to get bloggers to play along with a game which promoted their Cold War exhibition (read more on that here), but it would be nice to see more venues trying to introduce mystery in to their marketing.
