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 didn’t think the museum had anything relevant to their interests. But once we’d spoken to them at length about all the objects in the museum’s collection, they conceded there was in fact plenty for them to see and enjoy at the V&A.

Our campaign therefore had to familiarise this audience with the museum as a focus group discussion would. In short, we had to prove the V&A was relevant to people’s interests.

Our communications therefore aimed for relevance at all cost through forensic targeting, matching objects from the collection to the kinds of people who would be most likely to be interested in them.

‘If you’re into it, it’s in the V&A’ was a creative platform that set out to hero the breadth and variety of the museum’s collection, to correct the misperception that the museum had nothing relevant to people’s interests. Working with curators, creators, and influencers, we aimed to highlight the sheer range of hobbies, interests and passions represented at the V&A.

But it wasn’t enough to run a traditional campaign. We wanted to speak to our audience as and when they were engaging with their passions, in such a way as to pay tribute to their dearly-held interests. ‘If you’re into it, it’s in the V&A’ therefore had to travel to the places and publications the public held dear, no matter how niche the interest or unconventional the location.

Knowing that we needed to familiarise people with the V&A, we opted for a data-led approach. One that would prove indisputably to the public that the V&A is relevant to them. First, we identified our audience’s interests, then worked with curators to highlight the most relevant items from the collection to feature in OOH. For our super-targeted stunts, we made sure we paid tribute to people’s passions, by partnering with dozens of skilled creators to bring authenticity to our work, creating a campaign that people wouldn't just notice, but would adore. People who found our hidden objects could scan QR codes that immediately showed them the specific items in the V&A collection that would interest them, proving the truth of our proposition directly at the point of engagement with our campaign.

We first worked with curators to showcase 70 different objects across out of home, press, digital and social media, reaching the general public and the most passionate of collectors alike. We ran posters in contextually relevant OOH locations, and long copy adverts in special interest magazines such as the Angling Times. In every imaginable media space, we spoke to people’s passions as they were engaging in them.

And then we went even further. We bound books, dedicated theatre seats, knitted custom sweaters, hacked GTA Online, and buried engraved silverware, creating a range of innovative and world-first stunts in relevant locations for enthusiasts to stumble across and enjoy. The campaign ran to hundreds of unique executions, reaching people in scores of completely original ways and never-before-seen locations.

The campaign gained 37 million impressions as a result of online virality and widespread coverage in the national press, which was 98% positive. Searches for the V&A shot up 23% over the course of the campaign, and 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.

‘If you’re into it, it’s in the V&A’ 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.