2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Objective & Challenge

Get people to the new Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) exhibit.
MOCA was launching Age of You, a new exhibit about identity in the social space — a relevant but complicated subject. With a limited budget, the brand needed to create excitement, intrigue and drive ticket sales.
Getting more visitors to the museum was one objective, but first, it needed to get social media traction and get people talking about Age of You. The execution also had to fit the brand tone and purpose: breaking people from their ordinary.

Insight & Strategy

Nowadays, identity in the social space is created by sharing selfies — photos that identify people as cool, interesting and in-the-know.
So MOCA chose not to explain the exhibition theme and instead, create a hot selfie opportunity that invited people into the conversation about social identity. This got people sharing MOCA’s new exhibit and created a simple story for PR to tell on the topic of social identity.

Execution

The museum tapped into selfie culture (a theme of the exhibit) to promote the show by creating the ultimate selfie moment: a massive yellow thinking emoji that travelled around Toronto’s hot spots.
Along with the emoji came the question “If you don’t post a selfie, were you really here?”, that prompted people to think about their identity in today’s digital age and introduced them to the kinds of questions the exhibit was asking.
Each shared emoji selfie grew the conversation about identity in the social world and news about the exhibit spread, turning the theme into a living social trend.

Results

By tapping into social media behaviour and inviting people to participate in the campaign itself, the brand was successful in driving interest and increasing attendance to the new MOCA exhibit. There was also 16,032,039 earned impressions, a 144% increase in ticket sales, and a 207% increase in daily website traffic. It was the most visited exhibit in MOCA’s history and voted one of the top 10 most outrageous installations by Blog TO.

Credits

Agency Info:
Leo Burnett President: Ben Tarr
Leo Burnett Chief Creative Officer: Lisa Greenberg
Leo Burnett Head of Production: Franca Piacente
Leo Burnett SVP Creative Director: Steve Persico
Leo Burnett SVP Creative Director: Anthony Chelvanathan
Leo Burnett Copywriter: Appanna Chetranda
Leo Burnett Art Director: Natee Likitsuwankool
Leo Burnett Producer: Tania Gaudio
Leo Burnett Producer: Andre Williamson
Leo Burnett Integrated Project Manager: Carly Price
Leo Burnett Account Director: Mike Spilchuk
Leo Burnett Project Director: Thomas Degez
Leo Burnett Senior Digital Developer: Dan Purdy
Leo Burnett Director of Print Production: Gord Cathmoir
Leo Burnett SVP Head of Strategy: Tahir Ahmad
Leo Burnett Strategist: Dan Koutoulakis
Leo Burnett Photographer: Justin Tabakian
Leo Burnett Photographer: Eng Lau


Client
MOCA CEO and Executive Director: Heidi Reitmaier
MOCA Managing Director: Rachel Hilton
MOCA Director of Programs: November Paynter
MOCA Marketing Manager: Danielle Lim