Better Places for Your Mona Lisa

Please, never put your Mona Lisa in the lobby.

You’ll be wasting one of your best opportunities.

So where should we put it? Where do we put our iconic experience, that thing we’re known for?

Sky’s the limit, really. But here’s an idea starter kit:

Put It Far Away:
Take a page from Walmart. Place your top hit (whatever your consumer electronics department equivalent is) very visibly, and as far from the front door as possible. That way, your visitors will experience as many things as possible on the way to, and from your icon.

Hide It a Little:
Borrow from the Louvre. Borrow an idea, I mean. Put your icon away from the lobby, but not necessarily the most distant. Then … hide it a little. Put it in your equivalent of the Denon Wing, one of many galleries. Don’t worry about making it too easy to find. Getting good lost is the point.

Embed It:
If your iconic experience is online, embed it into a longer story. A video, a podcast, a long story page, or section of your site. Points users to the story, not the thing directly. Let them experience the icon in context, as part of something bigger, rather than just check the box that they saw it.

Here’s the thing: 
Put it far away, hide it a little, embed it. Just never put your Mona Lisa in the lobby.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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MtM Word of the Day:
Capital project. A big, capital-intensive (aka expensive) project to make or improve a major physical asset of an organization. A new wing of a museum, or a new exhibition meant to last several years or more, are both capital projects.