Longtime Field Museum public relations and advertising director Pat Kremer says her surprise resignation last week was prompted by the museum’s decision to “go in another direction” with its advertising. Translation: Kremer was informed that the museum’s account–worth roughly $1 million annually and handled by Chicago-based RPM during her dozen-year tenure–would be put out for bid. The decision had been made without consulting her. “It was a shock to me, because we had done such good work together and all of the feedback that we’d received from management had been very positive,” Kremer says.
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Kremer, who came to the Field in 1995 after nine years at the Chicago Historical Society, where she also headed advertising and PR, says she considered RPM part of her team. She first met people from the agency when she was called in for a presentation they made a few days before she started her job at the Field. “They started on the same day I did, and we worked with them for the entire 12 years,” she says. “We had a wonderful relationship, creating what I feel was the strongest museum brand in the midwest.” Projects they handled together included the unveiling of Sue, the Field’s T. rex skeleton–which turned into a worldwide media event–and last year’s Tut exhibit, a big hit (attendance jumped nearly 60 percent over the previous year to 2.1 million), though a few complained it didn’t deliver the major bling its billboards seemed to promise. Kremer credits RPM for regularly making it look like “we had a lot more money [to work with] than we did.”
Kremer says she took two weeks of vacation to clear her head, then concluded that “when you’re not comfortable moving in the same direction as your manager, you have a problem.” She returned to work June 11 with her resignation in hand.
