Branding for heritage

Carrying precious historical values, but for the public to know about the heritage, and vice versa, for the heritage to promote its own values, new communication methods are needed, suitable for the trend of the 4.0 era.

Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History attracts visitors with its modern, youthful brand identity and communication methods.

Branding for museums

Ho Chi Minh City is one of the localities with the largest number of public museums in the country. However, the exploitation of this potential is still limited. There are many reasons to explain the above situation, in which the subjective reason is that the communication methods and approaches to visitors of museums are still limited.

Faced with this reality, museums in Ho Chi Minh City have begun to change. A typical example is the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History (No. 2, Nguyen Binh Khiem Street, Ben Nghe Ward, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City). With nearly 100 years of operation, until recently, the museum only had one brand identity image, the architectural logo of the museum building. In 2024, the museum began to transform its communication method, starting with a new brand identity and immediately received an award in the category of Impressive Brand Repositioning Campaign at the Vietnam Creative Advertising Awards at the end of 2024.

Mr. Hoang Anh Tuan, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History, analyzed: “Building a new “brand” identity for the museum is considered a way to get rid of old impressions, historical prejudices or elements that are no longer suitable for the present. However, this needs to be done skillfully to avoid causing a feeling of “strangeness” to those who are familiar with the old image of the museum. The new brand identity helps the museum reshape its position and role, not only as a place to preserve history but also as a cultural, tourist and academic destination”.

From the familiar image of the Tran Dynasty terracotta dragon head, the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History and the team of Zám Studio (a cultural brand building and development unit) have combined to develop a new pattern image with the image of the Tran Dynasty dragon pattern spreading out in four directions as an invitation to explore the heritages in the museum. This pattern is part of a set of 12 patterns for each historical period and each feudal dynasty on display at the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History. "After launching the brand identity for the museum with the message "History is never old", after only 2 weeks, the museum's fanpage on Facebook has had nearly 2 million likes", a representative of the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History added.

Continuing the development of brand identity and communication campaigns, the War Remnants Museum (No. 28, Vo Van Tan Street, Vo Thi Sau Ward, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City) also launched a new communication campaign with the message "Because love is victory". A representative of the War Remnants Museum expressed: "In this communication campaign, the museum wishes to spread to each visitor the love for the homeland and the aspiration for peace - the noble reason for living of the Vietnamese people, which has crystallized into the extraordinary strength that created the historic victories of a small country".

Director DOAN NGOC MINH Founder of Say Hello Viet Nam Media Site: Balancing traditional values ​​and innovation

Museums and monuments should have a brand identity to attract the public, especially young people and international visitors. This is not just about logos or colors, but more importantly, creative and approachable storytelling, while expanding opportunities for cooperation with tourism and education. To do this well, it is necessary to apply modern tools such as short videos, vivid graphics or virtual reality technology... to bring new experiences to visitors. When this is done, heritage will become closer, more attractive and have a long-lasting vitality in the hearts of the public.

Creating trends for heritage

In Ho Chi Minh City, heritage media is seeing many opportunities thanks to the trend of experiential tourism and the development of technology. However, there are still challenges such as insufficiently attractive content, lack of emotional connection and not fully utilizing the power of social networks.

Director Doan Ngoc Minh, founder of the Say Hello Viet Nam media site, shared: “We need a new approach: building a creative communication campaign, applying digital technology to the tour experience, and cooperating with KOLs, influencers (famous people, influential people on the internet) in the field of tourism - culture. More importantly, heritage should not only be preserved but also told in an inspiring way so that the younger generation loves it and approaches it in their own way. With the combination of technology, storytelling (roughly translated: storytelling using words, images, videos to evoke messages) and community participation, cultural heritage communication will develop more and more strongly”.

To bring heritage into harmony with contemporary life, for the first time in Ho Chi Minh City, the content creation contest with the theme "Connecting heritage - Creating the future" was organized by the Journalism and Communication Association and the Cultural Heritage Association of Ho Chi Minh City University of Culture - two branches under the Ho Chi Minh City Cultural Heritage Association. The contest is not only a creative playground for young people who love digital content, but also an effective form of communication, helping to imprint the cultural values ​​of heritage in the hearts of the public. When the public themselves become storytellers, heritage is recreated through the creative perspective of the young generation, that is the most sustainable and effective way of communication.

BLUE

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/xay-dung-thuong-hieu-cho-di-san-post800438.html