The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) has teamed up with Courage to promote its limited-time bee exhibit using influencer marketing as the core strategy to drive more visits.
As part of the campaign, ROM unleashed two beekeepers at popular locations in Toronto before officially announcing the exhibit, amplifying speculation and inviting people to create social posts on Reddit and TikTok to uncover the mystery behind their appearance. Extending the reach was a network of paid social posts, including a street interview and detective deep dive, before the museum formally announced the “Bees: A Story of Survival” exhibit one week out from launch.
Image courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum
ROM’s VP of brand, marketing and membership Kathryn Brownlie tells strategy that the aim was to spark curiosity and attract both new and old visitors to experience its latest exhibit, which combines art, culture and nature to showcase bees and their importance to the world’s ecosystem. To create enough “buzz,” the museum was looking for an equally innovative approach to bolster outreach.
“A sense of intrigue was central to the idea,” Brownlie says. “Experiencing the unexpected before knowing ROM was behind whatever was happening created a more memorable moment and encouraged people to discover the exhibition through curiosity rather than traditional advertising.”
Brownlie notes that the dynamic multimedia strategy developed with Courage reached visitors from Toronto and beyond, with influencers bolstering the initial beekeeper mystery and discovery process, while the paid social extended the campaign’s reach to those who weren’t able to experience the mysterious figures in person.
The summer holiday season is the ROM’s peak attendance period and is an ideal time for the institution to appeal to families, which welcomes more than one million guests through its doors each year. The exhibit will run until Oct. 18 and features several themed activities, including allowing guests to step into the role of a digital pollinator, use microscopes to learn more about different pollen variants and discover the different environments and habitats where bees can nest.
“The exhibition is just one piece of positioning the museum as a must-visit cultural destination – especially during the summer season when both locals and tourists are looking for things to do, but also all year-round,” Brownlie says.
