Design was at the heart of this campaign. Notwithstanding the V&A’s status as one of the UK’s leading design-focused museums, every object created for the campaign had to be meticulously designed and crafted to fit into the world of its intended audience. Because when you’re obsessed with something, you know what looks right and what doesn’t.

The UK is home to nearly 70 million people with an enormous range of interests. People who largely don’t feel like museums reflect those interests. The V&A museums are a UK institution, with over 2.8 million items in the collection, spanning 5000 years of human creativity. And it’s not just statues and paintings, which can be the misperception. There are video games, contemporary fashion, technology, music memorabilia… the list is endless. In fact, it’s the most eclectic and wide-ranging museum collection in the UK, with something that will appeal to everyone, regardless of their individual interests.

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.

Hundreds of unique executions were designed for this campaign. First we ran targeted posters showcasing items relevant to their locations, and press in interest magazines. And then we got crafty. We rebound books, hand-painted and studded punk jackets, embroidered 2-metre battle flags and tailored pocket squares, altered watch faces, engraved century-old bottles and silver tankards, adorned jeans with Wild West-style leather patches, and took inspiration from sporting goods brands to print custom golf balls. Every object followed its own design rules to spark recognition and appreciation in fans of that specific interest area. We made a production company-style cinema ident, painted miniature Warhammer figurines, left calligraphic ads in art shops, designed stamps, donated fake 90s rave shirts to vintage stores, and made hand-painted pots to leave in antiques stores.. And there was much, much more.

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.