Nine Months

It's my pleasure to belatedly announce the launch of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History's new website, the centerpiece of a revitalized marketing and communications platform that's the result of the past 9 months' effort.  Created entirely in-house, the site features a vastly improved visual design and layout; two sets of navigational tools and a site-wide search feature; exhibition, event and news information available right from the homepage; an integrated social network; and a "floating footer" containing the most crucial information (hours, admission prices, contact and social icons) that's always present, not matter where one is on the site.

Nine months, the time of human gestation, the length between my joining the museum's staff and the launch of our new website.  The serendipity's made more apparent when paralleled with another intensely creative and cultural period in my life: Black Bottom Collective's first residency at the fabled (but now, sadly, closed) Fifth Avenue in Royal Oak, November 2002 - August 2003, which resulted in stellar performances; drawn-out jams on hip-hop, soul & rock; and a set of material that would form the basis for our second, award-winning album, People Mover. 

Creative tangent aside, the larger accomplishment has been threefold: to raise the quality of the museum's marketing to reflect its stature as the world's largest museum of African American history; to introduce steady communication rhythms on an annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily basis; and to hit these rhythms with relentless consistency.

We couldn't have accomplished these goals without the team that made them possible, including Edd Snyder, former executive director of corporate communications for General Motors, who came out of retirement to lead our department, and Keith Hearn, a new media aficionado with several years of experience at the museum.  It has been a privilege working with them, both from whom I learned much over the past 9 months.

Most recently, in the past few weeks we've been mentioned in both The New York Times and The Washington Post, and on July 5 Juanita Moore, the museum's president & CEO, participated in a roundtable discussion on National Public Radio.  National exposure is wonderful, and always hoped for from a PR perspective, but I'm actually more excited about the foundational online work we've completed.  And now, I'd like to engage in a bit of jujitsu on this desperate economic climate and use this time to rebrand and launch the museum's first long-term institutional awareness campaign.  Dollars may be tight and marketing budgets small, but our vision must be anything but.