RAM Rebrand

Royal Alberta Museum

The
CHALLENGE

How to makeover a 45-year-old brand

After 45 years at its cur­rent loca­tion, the Roy­al Alber­ta Muse­um (RAM) was mov­ing into a new breath­tak­ing, state-of-the-art home. The new build and move meant the RAM closed for three years to pack, move and unpack. Our chal­lenge was to breathe new life into this stale and dat­ed brand, build antic­i­pa­tion and buzz for the open­ing, and of course dri­ve vis­its and annu­al pass­es.

The IDEA

Step 1: Makeover their 10,000-year-old mascot

The relo­ca­tion pre­sent­ed a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty to repo­si­tion the brand in the hearts and minds of Alber­tans and present a more con­tem­po­rary and acces­si­ble RAM fit­ting of its impres­sive new digs. We start­ed by giv­ing the museum’s icon­ic but out­dat­ed logo, and its wool­ly mam­moth mas­cot, a major update. Next, inspired by the more than 2 mil­lion curios­i­­ty-piquing arti­facts that would make their home in the new RAM, we cre­at­ed the posi­tion­ing line: Feed your curios­i­ty. This new look and tagline were intro­duced to Edmon­ton in a cheeky teas­er cam­paign in the weeks lead­ing up to the grand open­ing.

The RESULTS

Step 2: Watch every expectation and target get blown away

RAM’s free grand open­ing tick­ets (21,500 in total) were snapped up in under 6 hours rather than the 7 days fore­cast. The demand saw RAM release 8,000 more, which were spo­ken for imme­di­ate­ly. Indi­vid­ual and fam­i­ly annu­al pass sales blew through past annu­al sales num­bers (over 3,500 sold in the first month ver­sus 1,591 sold in 2015). Aver­age month­ly vis­its in the first months of oper­a­tion exceed­ed tar­gets by 33%. And RAM-brand­ed mer­chan­dise sales drove more than $50k in rev­enue in the first 6 months. The new brand has been embraced by media and the pub­lic and gar­nered local, provin­cial, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media cov­er­age.

More Work