The National Liberty Museum is a private institution dedicated to preserving freedom and democracy by fostering good character and understanding for all people through education. In 2009, the museum came to Quaker City Mercantile and asked us if we would help them create buzz around their new Heroes of Character exhibit. Intended to enhance the museum’s core theme of character education, the virtues-based, interactive exhibit needed to be branded in a manner that would not only build awareness of the exhibit and drive traffic to the exhibit’s microsite, but drive ticket sales for the entire museum as a whole.

We developed a range of traditional and non-traditional approaches that promised to make the museum and the Heroes of Character exhibit stand out from Philadelphia’s crowded museum scene and become a destination. Each idea could stand on its own or work in tandem with other facets, allowing the museum to pick and choose which pieces worked best for it at any given time.

First we tackled the issue of giving the exhibit a one-of-a-kind traditional advertising campaign. We said, “Hey, if we’re going to do traditional print for a museum exhibition, we’ll do it differently.” We wanted to commission local artists to create attention-grabbing ads, posters and bus-shelters that got people talking about heroism, liberty and the museum... as well as the artistry of the ads in and of themselves. These artists could also create limited edition, NLM branded merchandise to be sold at the museum and featured in a in-house gallery show and exhibition opening event.

In order to raise awareness among a broad local audience, we proposed that the National Liberty Museum sponsor a ‘local hero’ section of the local press (TV, print and radio). Social media would also be leveraged as a cost-effective and crucial means of generating word of mouth, driving traffic to the heroesofcharacter.org microsite and generating a local community around the brand. By creating engaging content (images, videos, blog features, etc.) consumers would be encouraged to share exhibit-related content via Facebook, email and SMS.

Finally, we knew that in order for the National Liberty Museum to really get noticed, we’d have to create some pretty solid, non-traditional work. We had this great idea to start an NLM branded campaign to induct Stephen Colbert as the exhibits next Hero of Character. With his widespread appeal and tendency to get behind self-congratulatory causes such as this, Colbert would be perfect the perfect addition to the Heroes of Character exhibit.