Take a Bite Out of Media Content
The story drives the content―always. Whether your destination is a small museum with a scrappy budget or a bustling theme park with a robust cash flow, you can create media content at a variety of scales and production levels to bring your story to life.
Imagine two museums that celebrate everything about pizza. Each offers exhibits about ingredients, ovens, crust thicknesses, and interactive maps that highlight different types of pizza around the world. One has a robust media budget and is rolling in dough. The other is a little kneady and has a scrappy approach to media content. Let’s dig in and see how each museum would approach a media plan for the special exhibit: THE MYSTERY OF MARGHERITA.
SMALL
Robust: Serialized videos tell the story of Queen Margherita of Savoy’s visit to Naples in 1889 in 30 second clips, released daily on all social media platforms. Actors in period costume bring the tale of Queen Margherita’s first bite of pizza to life in these highly produced dramatizations that end on mini cliff hangers each day, leading up to the opening of the exhibition.
Scrappy: Two museum educators go on Instagram live and make a margherita pizza from scratch while discussing why pizza maker Raffaele Esposito selected basil, tomatoes, and mozzarella to top Queen Margherita’s pizza. You will never look at basil the same way again!
MEDIUM
Robust: Visitors can put themselves in Chef Raffaele Esposito’s shoes in this interactive exhibit with highly produced motion graphics and video. After selecting a country, visitors will make a pizza for its queen. A gesture-based interface leads visitors through all the steps, from tossing the dough high in the air to selecting the toppings. Will the new pizza rise—or fold under pressure?
Scrappy: Visitors go on a deep dive into the three toppings of the margherita in this layered exhibit that immerses them in the colors of the Italian flag with bold graphics, lighting effects, and video displays. The red room features videos of chefs talking about what goes into their tomato sauce. The white room shows the steps to making the perfect fresh mozzarella. In the green room, pieces of basil can be moved into different patterns on an interactive pizza board. The pattern reveals different stories about how this famous pizza got its name.
LARGE
Robust: The history of the margherita pizza is told in a sweeping epic 4D theater experience. The dough feels like it is coming right out of the screen as it is tossed into the air. The seats heat up as fresh mozzarella cheese bubbles in the oven. The smell of the perfectly charred crust fills the air, and every visitor will smile knowingly as Queen Margherita takes her first cheesy bite and can’t find the end of the cheese no matter how far away she pulls the slice from her face.
Scrappy: No theater? No problem! Rent a portable screen and host a movie night in the museum’s largest meeting hall or outside of your venue. Pizza and drinks from the museum cafe or a local pizza food truck keep guests satisfied and having fun. For a more adult crowd, Eat Pray Love highlights pizza margherita in a Naples pizzeria. For a family crowd, spot all the pizza scenes in Home Alone.
MEGA
Robust: Host an outdoor event that brings the façade of the museum to life at night with projection mapping. The fiery flames of the oven can dance over the façade in one scene, and the whole building can turn to melting cheese in the next. Have fun with the idea of royalty and feature music, visuals, and pizza loosely connected with royal figures in modern history. Barbecue Pork Pizza is the favorite pizza of Elvis Presley—also known as ‘The King.’ Imagine images of Elvis and pizza dancing around the façade of your museum as Burning Love fills the air. Food and drink stations each feature a unique pizza.
Scrappy: Host a scavenger hunt event. Hide clues around the museum or spread them out in the neighborhood. Clues can be shared on your website, a DIY app, or a sheet of paper that visitors pick up at the museum or at a pop-up shop in the neighborhood that also sells exhibit merchandise. Clues hidden in media elements can include fun visuals, pizza puns, and can be as easy or difficult to solve as you choose. Perhaps there is a pot of daisies that reveal the clue that margherita means daisy in Italian and that the basil leaves are placed in the shape of a daisy on the pizza. There are lots of possibilities for a margherita-themed scavenger hunt that can lead visitors from the museum to partners in the community.
No matter how you slice it, folding media into your experience can help you share compelling stories and messages with any budget.
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