Drake Creative

What does a museum do when no one can walk in the door? How about sending what you’ve got out into the world?

In creating the At Home with the Roosevelts brand for the FDR Presidential Library & Museum, we wanted to take what people love about this institution and make sure they can access it from anywhere in the world, on any device. The more episodes we produced, the more we realized a couple of things. First, we were making content more accessible, to more people, in a way that won’t change once the museum doors opened again. Secondly, we made behind the scenes content available from the parts of the museum that people aren’t allowed to visit.

Onsite filming Director Paul Sparrow leads a special tour inside the FDR Library’s Behind the Scenes storage area where FDR’s priceless collection of rare ship models is kept.

In creating the various channels of this campaign (video, newsletter and education activities), we tried to think about not only what people needed at the time (during lockdown), but also what will continue being useful over and over again into the future. The response was remarkable.

• The At Home with the Roosevelts video series was picked up by CSPAN American History TV
• A 400% increase in YouTube subscriber base
• More views on YouTube in one quarter than the entire previous viewing history combined
• A 50% increase in newsletter subscriber base
• Increased followers on every social media channel (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram)

It’s not magic. If you understand your audience, and you put the right systems in place to produce quality content on a regular basis, you give people a reason to pay attention. Having cool model ships helps too.