Museums of Ferrara: Communication Campaign

The Regional Museum Complex of Emilia-Romagna (Polo Museale dell’Emilia-Romagna) was born in March 2015, following the reorganization of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage (MIBACT), which separated activities regarding conservation from activities that involve enhancing the cultural heritage of the state which now belongs to museums in individual regions.

The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Ferrara and the Casa Romei Museum are two unique places of great artistic, historical and architectural significance, but are slightly off the beaten track of the classic tourist route. This means that the two museums are less visited and therefore less appreciated, despite the fact that they both represent an important part of the cultural panorama in Ferrara and are have undeniable artistic value at a national level.

It was therefore necessary to create new communication tools to increase the visibility of these places, highlighting their specific characteristics and at the same time the natural link between them and The Regional Museum Complex of Emilia-Romagna, involving both the public who already visit the museums, new cultural tourists and everybody else.

After a brief meeting with directors of the two museums, BAM! developed a proposal based on creating new, coordinated, digital and paper tools, that correspond with each other.

Among the various options, the concept chosen was one that highlighted the emotional experience provided to visitors of the two museums, creating a perfect unison of offline and online channels.

“Agile” paper materials were created, with bright colours that recalled themes from the Renaissance period in Ferrara, and powerful high resolution images that retain the rhomboid pattern format, already being used in other Regional Museum Complexes. For each museum we created:

• A foldable A3 card that once opened reveals a full-page image, that turns into a poster
• A 3 poster set of A5 postcards, on a rack
• A 70 x 100 poster with images of the facades of the museums
• A bookmark and a sticker

Each one includes an invitation to visit the other museum, to reinforce the theme of connection between the two structures.

The paper materials contain a QR Code that links to a one-minute teaser video, which plays with the themes of empathy and engagement, showing glimpses of the museums, showing visitors who have volunteered to give testimonials, revealing details about the collections without giving away too much. We created the two videos, in collaboration with Visual Lab, with the aim of reaching web users and tourists with smartphones with these paper tools.

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