How PHD UK used media to show the world that The V&A has something for everyone

Most people in the UK have heard of the V&A but less than a third felt familiar with the museum and its collection. Further qualitative research revealed our audience thought the museum had nothing relevant to their interests.

But once we’d told them about all the objects in the museum’s collection, they conceded there was in fact plenty for them to enjoy at the V&A. Our campaign therefore had to familiarise this audience with the museum in the same way a focus group discussion would.

We had to prove the V&A was relevant to a wide variety of people’s interests.

The approach

Our qualitative research had already uncovered that our core 18-35 y/o target audience thought the V&A had nothing relevant to their interests.

So, we then ran extensive data-gathering efforts to work out what the key passions of the demographic actually were and where people went to engage with them. Some of the insights we gleaned reinforced hunches that we already had, e.g. that past-times like Gaming, football and fashion would be prominent.

But others were more surprising – and delightfully niche.

For example, we discovered that the UK has over 7.3m knitters, and >40k metal detectorists. With that kind of data, we were able to work with V&A curators to identify which of 2.8m+ items in the V&A collection were the right ones to focus on AND plan our media and activations in the most contextually relevant locations.

Strategy & Idea

‘If you’re into it, it’s in the V&A’

Our strategic media approach broke down into three pillars.

1) Mass reach (using more populist media channels and interests as examples)

2) Contextual relevance (using V&A examples that were relevant to their media surroundings)

3) Niche (surprising executions aimed at some of our less mainstream interest groups that could make a greater noise on social media and PR beyond their initial execution)

Pillars 2 and 3 were essential because – though people are ‘into’ a huge variety of things - advertising is rarely one of them.

If there was ever a campaign that needed its media to appeal to its target audience(s) in ways that they would be delighted by and pay attention to, it was this one.

But interrupting people while they’re doing ‘their thing’ is a risky strategy, so we had to take our message to people in ways that would surprise and delight them.

The media choices we made on this campaign would need to speak to our audience as-and-when they were engaging with their passions and pay tribute to their dearly held interests.

‘If you’re into it, it’s in the V&A’’s media activations therefore had to travel to the places and publications our target audience held dear, no matter how niche the interest or unconventional the location.

Campaign execution

The campaign featured 70 different V&A objects, which were turned into 70 different executions across OOH, print, digital, and social media, as well as a significant number of bespoke experiential activations.

For mass reach we used OOH to promote more mainstream V&A objects, e.g. fashion content near Westfield shopping centre and theatre in London’s West End.

And we ran long-copy ads for interests like gaming, football, and fishing in special interest magazines such as T3, FourFourTwo, and the Angling Times.

Then we went further, creating dozens of unique executions, reaching enthusiasts online with creator videos and in never-used-before physical locations with real items for them to stumble-upon and, importantly, share.

For example:

• We hid a ‘If you’re into Book Binding, it’s in the V&A’ book in London’s trendiest bookstore.

• A knitting influencer knitted a custom ‘If you’re into knitting, it’s in the V&A’ sweater.

• A Twitch influencer played a gaming live stream with ‘If you’re into gaming, it’s in the V&A’ on her character’s jacket.

• We buried a tankard engraved with ‘If you’re into silverware, it’s in the V&A’ for metal detectorists.

• And placed V&A messaging inside DePop purchases (for sneaker heads), on golf-range balls, on the back of theatre seats, on Warcraft figures, cinema idents, pottery in antique shops, and even as a flag in a battle re-enactment.

People who found our objects could scan QR-codes that immediately showed them the specific items in the V&A, proving the truth of our proposition at the point of engagement with the campaign.

Uncovering niche pastimes also unearthed uncatered-for audiences like Swifties. This led to a V&A call out for Superfans to help fill gaps in the V&A collection, with 1000s of hopefuls applying to fill the Taylor Swift Superfan role.

Results

The campaign gained 37m impressions as a result of online virality and PR coverage (which was 98% positive).

• Searches for the V&A shot up 23% over the course of the campaign,

• Searches for the campaign’s featured items in the V&A collection went up by up to 12,000%.

There were more than 300k engagements with the campaign’s content on social media.

The Book Binding creator video became the V&A’s most-watched piece of organic content ever - currently at 3.4m views - a powerful reinforcement of our campaign’s insight that you’d be amazed what people are ‘into’.

‘If you’re into it, it’s in the V&A’ also successfully changed perceptions of the museum.

• People are now +47% more likely to say the V&A is a place for me.

• and +51% more likely to say it’s relevant to them.

• Awareness increased by +28%.

But the campaign didn’t just shift opinion, it changed behaviour too.

• People are +56% more likely to recommend the V&A to someone and +37% more likely to visit.

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