{"id":7157,"date":"2016-05-23T09:00:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T13:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumhack.wpengine.com\/?p=7157"},"modified":"2025-02-20T12:06:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T17:06:43","slug":"travel-leisure","status":"publish","type":"do_not_index","link":"https:\/\/museumhack.com\/travel-leisure\/","title":{"rendered":"We got ripped off by a huge company. Again."},"content":{"rendered":"
Last summer we were shocked to find one of the world\u2019s largest media companies piggy-backing on our small brand. It appeared this company was using the Museum Hack trademark, without permission, to increase traffic to their website.<\/p>\n
Heads up — today\u2019s article outlines that media company\u2019s continued disregard for good business practice and laws. The issues here are relevant to anyone who loves museums like we do, or even just believes that business practices should be fair. Big companies shouldn\u2019t be able to steal a small art business\u2019 street cred — we\u2019ve worked too hard for it. We need your help as readers and fans to help put this issue to an end. This article has two parts: a quick summary of the original conflict and then a review of how it has escalated since then. Let\u2019s get started\u2026<\/p>\nThe COPY appeared in Travel + Leisure this month. Our original is on the right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/p>\n
How Travel + Leisure Uses Marketing Techniques For Google Search Results<\/h3>\n
Whenever someone mentions \u201cMuseum Hack\u201d online we get a notification. Usually this is an article written by a journalist that came on tour, a museum partner we\u2019ve shared our expertise with so they can re-invent their own tours and galleries, or an update to our rankings on TripAdvisor (we are currently top 10 in NYC!)<\/p>\n
But back in August 2015, we received a bunch of pings we were concerned about — Travel + Leisure published a series of 5+ articles titled \u201cMuseum Hack\u201d that had nothing to do with us.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a quick summary:<\/p>\n
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A small company like ours doesn\u2019t have many assets, but an important one we do have is our name. The \u201cMuseum Hack\u201d name and our talented staff are really the only constants here, everything else including our product offering, operating cities, marketing, etc. changes over time.<\/li>\n
We\u2019ve invested a lot of time and money developing our brand. Building a website and creating great content costs $$, and our \u201cunconventional museum tours\u201d are the result of thousands of hours of practice. We are fortunate that our efforts attracted features on PBS, the Wall Street Journal and TED, and we have a great reputation with a growing list of clients and partners. We hired a lawyer to register our trademark and help protect this brand.<\/li>\n
Travel + Leisure released a series of articles with titles like, \u201cMuseum Hack: How to Master New York City\u2019s Metropolitan Museum\u201d, that aren\u2019t about us — but by including our name they may appear in Google search results more often for the growing number of people searching for these words. This means someone searching for us could find that unrelated article instead. At the time there were about five articles that followed this format. Side note: there is nothing \u201chack\u201d about the T+L series, it\u2019s just general information about the museums.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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