Dag van het Kasteel

Personally I never knew anything about castles other than that there were epic battles with knights and princesses in royal families. The King Arthur and Sir Lancelot-type of stories that inspired a lot of children’s toys where my foundation when I reacted on a request of Dag van het Kasteel to hire a Communication Manager. What I eventually found was a passionate team of people that were willing to take advise if that meant more people wound enjoy their passion for history as well. Read more about how this became one of my favorite projects in the rest of this article.

About Dutch Castle Foundation

The Dutch Castle Foundation (Nederlandse Kastelenstichting) is dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich heritage of castles, country houses, and rural estates in the Netherlands. Established to safeguard these historical structures, the foundation engages in various activities, including research, restoration, and public education.

About Day of the Castle

Dag van het Kasteel is an annual heritage event in the Netherlands that spotlights castles and country estates. Since its inception in 2008, it has traditionally been held on Whit Monday (Tweede Pinksterdag). During this event, over 120 castles, country estates, castle gardens, and ruins across the Netherlands open their doors to the public, including sites that are typically not accessible. Visitors can engage in various activities, such as guided tours, historical reenactments, and educational programs, all designed to deepen appreciation for these historical monuments. The event is organized by Stichting Dag van het Kasteel, an independent foundation dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of preserving castles and country estates as integral parts of Dutch cultural heritage.

Starting by looking at the Analytics

After getting a green light on this project I started by analysing the ‘owned’ data from Dag van het Kasteel (DvhK). In which I found a gap in the audiences that were targeted in their mission, that were visiting their website and that were engaging on their social media channels. While the foundation wanted to attract scholars of history and history buffs alike with their scientific articles, the users that actually visited were 65 years and up looking for castles to visit. We later found out these were (grand)parents looking for recreational visits in the weekends. The social media posts on the other hand had a following of 35 to 50 year olds that didn’t convert into visitors to the website because the whole story was already in the post itself. While the idea of having a target audience isn’t bad at all, the main KPI was to get a minimum of 250k visitors in the week of the event. To match that target I started from scratch.

Starting from scratch: give the customer their journey

After finding the 4 main audiences we needed to communicate to and cater through their customer journeys on the Dag van het Kasteel website. The 4 audiences being:

The Scholars and History Buffs

Wanting more information and seeking details of their favorite subjects, we needed to change the way we got these (starting) History Buffs hooked to the posts we made on the website. So we changed the way of writing to be more inclusive to starters and I gave the posts different icons for a faster way of finding useful information by the target audience.

The Entertainment Visitors

The (grand)parents looking for a fun day with their spouse or children needed to find their way on the website within 3 clicks. So I looked for a way to get this done by having an interactive map under the menu item called “Find Your Castle”. Here you had a custom Google Maps widget with all of the Dutch participating castles. All of which had their own landing page for SEO purposes and for possible “buy-in” of SEA.

The Press & Media

A big difference when I started was implementing a portal for the Press and Media. Where the foundation usually sent out all of their information at once, I introduced a “drip feed”. We created smaller news we could share over time so it would be easier for press to jump in on news items later on and tag along with the bigger story we wanted to tell.

The Castle Owners

Castle Owners are participants that have their own login and press release feed. They need to be up to date of the latest organisation news. We had to plan the Castle Day around the time all the Corona (COVID-19) lockdowns were set by the Dutch government and we had to keep the information flowing in a very uncertain time. Luckily we had a portal for the owners and curators of the castles and houses.

Simplifying communication

I implemented the KISS Method for the communication throughout the whole brand. I didn’t want to over simplify everything, but I wanted people to be able to know what the blog post or news item was about at a glance. So I started with new color schemes to get more contrast on the website and all communication channels. I chose dark blue and dark green for their psychological aspects. As dark blue is prone to draw attention as it stands for authority and is used by governments and military alike. Look at suits of pilots and high ranking military personnel. Dark green would implement the outdoors aspect of castles. Not only because the theme that year was “What? Water!” and drew emphasis on gardens and waterworks outside of the castle walls, but also because the visitors need to walk around the properties and their acres filled with nature.

The second action was to create icons that resembled the subjects we wanted to discuss. You can see (in the picture above) how the title draws attention, the face is still in the golden ratio and the icon gives away that it’s a post about history. I created templates for these in Canva so the rest of the team could also make creatives in a couple of minutes, without having to go to a third party designer. This way the design agencies could focus on bigger projects like posters.

Conclusion

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