Destinations Council Destiny Awards > Short-Term Marketing Campaign

Visit Seattle

+Play Film Series

About This Entry:

In an effort to boost travel during slower winter months, Visit Seattle created Seattle Museum Month – a program in which, for the month of February, guests staying at downtown hotels receive 50% off admission to over 41 arts & cultural museums and institutions in the Seattle area. It’s a great hook considering that the number of visits to American museums each year outpaces attendance for all major league sporting events and theme parks combined.

Yet while museums are one of the most popular ways to spend time on vacation, a combination of research and social media chatter suggested it may be something they feel is ‘expected’ to do vs. really WANT to do.
To us, that was a shame. Especially since, here in Seattle, we have a diverse collection of multisensory museums built to elicit much more than some cursory looks and paragraph reading: they beg for real interaction.
We saw that as an opportunity to take this taciturn approach to museums and flip it on its head. To encourage people to break from their regimented, adult approach to museum touring, and inject some real playfulness – and to do it during Seattle Museum Month.

Specifically, our goals were to:
• Boost awareness and engagement in Seattle’s museum scene
• Increase conversation and interest in visiting during Seattle Museum Month

Campaign Strategy:

Who better to pull off playfulness than a group of museum guides… who are children.
We put Madelyn, Ryan, Peyton, Parker, Christian, Harry, and Aliya in charge of group tours at six of Seattle’s most popular (and interactive) museums, then stood back to watch what would happen.
We presented each tour through a film series, aptly titled “+Play”. Every episode shines a light on a different museum, brought to life as only a youthful perspective can do.
In a world of “no touching” and “inside voices” our young guides invited people to feel, play, interact, make, fly, climb, sing, listen, talk, ask, and wonder at our museums. From the MoPOP (Museum of Pop Culture)…to MOHAI (Museum of History and Industry)…to The Museum of Flight.
The film series lived on VISITSEATTLE.tv and on YouTube. Trailers ran across digital video and paid social to draw people into the series and encourage them to watch more. Through an integrated partnership with NBC, we designed native content and targeted social support that went deep into twelve key culturally-attune markets across the U.S. It was a media approach that allowed us to drive high impact through a focused effort.

Results:

In only two months, +Play garnered over 1.725MM views and over a year’s worth of watch time (649K minutes) on YouTube alone. We drove over 59MM social impressions and 255K clicks to further Seattle Museum Month information on the site. And our content delivered a CTR on Facebook that exceeded Facebook norms by 3 times.
People exposed to +Play content on YouTube were 38% more likely to search for Seattle on Google. And a brand lift study showed a 70% increase in consideration to visit during this time period.
Most importantly, 14,746 Seattle Museum Month guest passes were redeemed during the month of February. That’s over 500 out-of-town visitors exploring our arts & culture scene each day.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

The group created engaging and heartfelt content while staying within the parameters of the project and exceeding their goals. The videos are engaging and unique. They are built upon the idea that museums are stuffy and boring, and they break down that wall through a video series that delights and surprises, while tugging at the heartstrings of the audience. The creativity displayed in exploring an alternative view of a museum and the finished product resulted in a beautifully shot short film that really connected with its viewers. The campaign created an uptick in visitors to Seattle museums and built a vehicle for Visit Seattle to keep re-engaging the audience. The series is a bit serial, in that watching one compels the viewer to want to watch another. Through the partnership with downtown hotels, Visit Seattle was able to achieve their goals and then some. Overall, this is a delightful campaign that meets the audience where they live and pulls them in for more.