The Museum of Contemporary Arts (MOCA) Toronto wanted to promote Age of You, a new exhibition that made people think about their online presence in the era of social media.

With a limited budget, we needed to get people talking about the exhibit and drive ticket sales by getting people to the museum. The execution also had to be consistent with the MOCA brand as the museum that makes people think.

To promote the exhibition, we created a symbol that got people questioning how they spent their time online—a giant Thinking Emoji that travelled across Toronto and stopped people in their tracks by posing provocative questions and prompting people to think about how they spend their time online.

Instead of trying to explain the theme of the exhibition, we created a PR-able moment that invited Toronto’s digitally-savvy population into a conversation and demonstration about the Age of You. With provocative questions, each one relevant to the location the Thinking Emoji popped up in, we got them to not only think about their online presence but also had them spread the message and eventually visit the exhibition.

Knowing that our exhibition would reasonate with a digitally-savvy target, we chose high-traffic urban locations in Toronto with messaging relevant to those spots.

We then created a symbol that got people questioning how they spent their time online—a giant Thinking Emoji that travelled across Toronto and stopped people in their tracks by posing provocative questions:

At Toronto’s most Instagrammed park:

If you don’t take a selfie, were you really here?

In Toronto’s high-end shopping district:

When you shop online, are you the customer or the product?

At a popular sightseeing stop with lots of cameras, we asked:

If cameras are watching you for safety, who’s watching the watchers?

The more people stopped and pondered the issues our messages highlighted, the more they shared, posted and spread the message.

The Thinking Emoji brought a lot of attention to our exhibition and the topic it highlighted, drawing an unprecedented number of visitors to MOCA.

The results:

- 16 million+ earned impressions.

- 144% increase in ticket sales.

- 207% increase in website traffic.

- The most visited exhibition in MOCA’s history.