Situation: Our partnership with the Sid Richardson Museum has focused on bringing more visitors to view the intimite space and its private collection of Western art from Sid Richardson’s private collection. Mr. Richardson’s personality was as large as his appetite for art of the American West, and visitors regale at docent stories of how and why he sought out certain pieces. In addition to promoting in-person visits, we wanted the museum website to capture the spirit of the space, and embarked on a redesign of their online presence.
Strategy: A full creative campaign for the exhibit “A Fortune in Oils” captured the colorful personality of the museum’s namesake. Ads on social media gave the museum a younger edge and targeted both Western art lovers and those who had never heard of the museum. We brought awareness to the exhibit through media relations and print ads in the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo publication. For subsequent exhibits, we added digital marketing to the mix to great success, a full redesign of the website, and an OOH takeover of Fort Worth’s Sundance Square, where the museum is located.
For the website, we sought to bring a modern, mobile-first design while also creating automation and efficiencies for the client. The new site, launched in early 2020, gave the museum an event calendaring and ticketing system, automated tour sign-ups, a searchable artwork collection database, and exhibition archives all while giving their team direct administration capabilities for day-to-day operations.
Impact: Our success in increasing attendance at exhibits has led to a years-long relationship with the museum and a partnership based on trust and responsiveness. When COVID-19 closures began to take place, the museum’s planned exhibition launch was interrupted. Years of planning and coordinating a rotating exhibit with other museums came to a halt as museum doors were closed and the exhibit shuttered.
With our solid relationship fueling the partnership, we quickly created a virtual self-guided tour of the gallery space, complete with contextual content to enrich the viewing experience. We then worked with the client to create a resource for educators seeking content and programming, with a series of pages featuring virtual field trip information for teachers.