Inspirational Museum Marketing

Kelly Day // July 7, 2010 // Advertising, Public Relations // No Comments

I wanted to share some inspirational museum marketing stunts that have resulted in generating lots of museum publicity.

The first is the Space Invader Walk.

As part of it’s promotion for the exhibition “Viva la Revolucion” (beginning on July 17) the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego has planted 21 space invaders throughout the city.

The space invaders—recently featured in the Banksy film—are strategically placed so that their locations create the outline of a giant space invader when seen from above (see Google Maps image below).

Not only is this a great way to get publicity for the museum, it’s also a living exhibition all on it’s own as you can literally travel around the city, finding all of the invaders, a great weekend activity that is conveniently located near MCASD’s downtown San Diego location.

The second is the Red Cube Project.

This project was created to support “500 Ways of Looking at Modern,” the Art Institute’s yearlong exploration and celebration of all things modern.

The museum hid 500 cubes around the city (including 4 extra large versions), each one with it’s own art project attached. The lucky finder is tasked with completing the assignment and returning the cube to the museum. A few of these lucky artists then had their work showcased at the museum.

The museum encouraged those who didn’t find a cube to create their own and post a picture of it to the project’s website. A smart idea that encouraged people from all walks of like to get involved helped the campaign go viral.

You can see many more of the cubes that were created on the museum’s Flickr page.

Have you seen any other inspirational museum marketing campaigns recently?