Big ideas can grow from humble beginnings, be it a passing comment—“let’s turn the Museum into a volcano”—or a simple hand-drawn sketch.
Pompeii was intended to showcase the ROM in a new light and, therefore, the exhibition needed to launch in a very different way. To do so, I led an experiential campaign that began by turning the Museum’s facade into Mt. Vesuvius, affectionately dubbed ROMsuvius. Over the course of the week, the volcano became more and more active each night, culminating with an eruption at the corner of Bloor and Queen’s Park on opening night. While innovative, the project was not without its challenges; namely a city-wide moratorium on new permits. To succeed, I combined creative thinking with good old-fashioned guerrilla advertising tactics. ROMsuvius created major buzz in the week leading up to the exhibition launch, including a breakthrough earned-media moment.
As a second element of the experiential campaign, I worked with curators and an external agency to create a realistic 3D chalk drawing of an excavation site at Pompeii on the Museum’s plaza, featuring several of the marquee objects from the exhibition. The chalk drawing generated another wave of buzz as the calendar moved into the latter half of the exhibition’s run, propelling the project to a strong close.