Paul Baron & Tomomi Sasaki gave a talk titled "MuPon: Mobile discounts to foster repeat visitors & an art-going lifestyle" at MuseumNext 2012 in Barcelona. This material supplements our talk with information about MuPon’s museum partners in two parts: characteristics & breakdown of venues.

1. MuseumNext 2012
MuPon

2. MuPon is an iPhone app service that offers exclusive
discounts on admission to museum exhibitions and art
events in the Tokyo area. It is automatically updated on a
weekly basis with discounts from over 30 partner
museums and locations.
Paul Baron & Tomomi Sasaki introduced MuPon at
MuseumNext 2012 in Barcelona. (see slides)
This material supplements our talk with information
about MuPon’s museum partners in two parts:
characteristics & breakdown of venues.

3. Characteristics
Once venues start, they tend to stay
MuPon is popular with venues and genres on the
lookout for younger audiences
Not much luck with antique art or venues with older
audiences
MuPon venues are active with other promotional
initiatives, too
Almost no luck with national museums

4. Once venues start, they tend to stay
While there is no obligation to continue, we’ve found
that once venues offer the MuPon discount once,
they usually hop on board the platform and continue
the service for all of their exhibitions. Exhibition
sponsors might step in on occasion with strict
discount policies but those are the exceptions.
The stickiness is particularly prominent with small-
to-mid sized venues, for whom MuPon brings a
considerable bump in visibility and audience
numbers. Offering a discount on MuPon is free,
making the threshold to start a very low one - which
makes venues with small promotion budgets
especially happy!

5. Popular with venues and genres on the
lookout for younger audiences
Contemporary art and design has always been the
main focus for the Gadago NPO, so the success with
cross-genre pollination has been an exciting surprise.
Who would have guessed that our audience would
flock to exhibitions of ukiyoe paintings and stone
buddhas? We’ve seen an increase in venues that are
specifically interested in MuPon as a new channel of
communication to reach younger audiences.
Movie distributors are also companies that we’ve
never really done business with, prior to MuPon.
They tend to be more forthcoming with their
interest and open to experimental initiatives.
Documentary movies on the topics of dance and
photography have done well with our audience.

6. Not much luck with antique art or venues
with older audiences
On the other hand, museums that predominantly
feature antique art shy away from trying mobile
initiatives due to their (much?) older audience.
And it’s true that exhibitions that don’t offer a clear
context for twenty/thirty somethings have less
success with mobilizing MuPon audiences. We think
this is something we can work on, and there’s
definitely antique art out there that’s exciting for the
younger crowd.

7. MuPon venues are active with other
promotional initiatives, too
For instance:
Some of our partners were the earliest museums to
be on Twitter in Japan. Nerima Art Museum, the first
public institution on MuPon, crowdsourced their
museum tagline and logo design under their first
civilian director. Meguro Museum of Art has run
Foursquare check-in campaigns and fans can take
photos of their favorite artworks under a Creative
Commons license. Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum
of Art launched a Facebook page for a Moholy-Nagy
László retrospective. Yamatane Museum gave
discounts to visitors wearing kimonos during their
kimono exhibition.

8. Almost no luck with national museums
As an iOS application, MuPon is available to everyone
- everyone with an iPhone or iPod. To a national
museum, this indicates that the service would be
“lacking in publicness” and we haven’t been able to
convince them to take part. Yet.
We would love for national institutions to take the
lead in initiatives like this, and believe there’s an
opening for a neutral platform run by a not-for-
profit organization.

9. Venues can be categorized into the
following six types
Small-to-mid sized museums
Major museums
Festivals and events
Stage and film
Retail spaces
Non-art museums

11. 1. Small-to-mid sized museums
The largest number of partners are small-to-mid
sized museums with clear missions and high quality
collections.
They are usually either privately owned or run by
foundations. A good number of museums are a day’s
trip from central Tokyo.
Examples:
Bridgestone Museum of Art
Meguro Museum of Art
Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art (Chiba)

12. 2. Major museums
These are the big museums in town that even non-
art goers are familiar with.
Examples:
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT)
Yokohama Museum Of Art

13. 3. Festivals and events
Annual blockbuster fairs and festivals.
Examples:
Art Fair Tokyo
Tokyo Designers Week

14. 4. Stage and film
Events featured on MuPon aren’t necessarily held at
museums or galleries. We’ll feature interesting
events as long as it’s a good fit for our audience, who
have shown a strong appreciation for the cross-
genre aspect of the selection.
Examples:
Festival/Tokyo (festival for performance art)
Pina (documentary film)

15. 5. Retail spaces
Department stores in Japan often have exhibitions.
Examples:
"Zipangu" Exhibition (Takashimaya)
"Muneyoshi Yanagi: An Eye for Life" Exhibition (Matsuya)

16. 6. Non-art museums
Tokyo Art Beat focuses on art and design events, but
MuPon also features venues that science, history,
and s ocial science.
Examples:
National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation
Newspark - The Japan Newspaper Museum

17. Top 10 MuPon exhibitions in 2011
1. Kohei Nawa "Synthesis" at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
2. Yokohama Triennale
3. "Metabolism, The City of the Future" Exhibition at Mori Art Museum
4. "Feel and Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion" Exhibition at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
5. Motohiko Odani "Phantom Limb" at Mori Art Museum
6. "Typography Poster" Exhibition at Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum
7. "Kusama's Body Festival in 60s" Exhibition at Watari-um, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art
8. "Be Alive! - Selections from the Hara Museum Collection" Exhibition at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
9. "Toulouse-Lautrec: The Maurice Joyant Collection" Exhibition at Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo
10. Seiko Mikami "Desire of Code" at NTT ICC Inter Communication Center

18. ありがとうございました！
Thank You!
Paul Tomomi
@aka_me @tzs