Squaxin Island Tourism and Squaxin Island Museum Library and Research Center

SmartMeme Studios has worked with the Squaxin Island Museum Library and Research Center (MLRC) under retainer with Squaxin Island Tourism since 2016, providing marketing and collateral materials for the museum, indigenous cultural events, as well as tourism collateral and trade shows. We began in 2016 by leveraging the museum’s traditional print and radio marketing with modern geo-targeted digital ad campaigns and other digital promotional content - bringing the museum into the current digital marketing era. We created transmedia marketing campaigns, reaching new audiences on social media to better reflect the full spectrum of museum events and content.

Marketing achievements for the museum included: driving foot traffic to the museum, marketing annual fundraising events, developing the print and online digital ad campaign “Discover the Whole Story,” creating new museum exhibits such as Salish Ink on the history of tribal tattoos, maintaining and growing the museum’s social media pages, and researching the new MLRC Strategic Marketing Plan for 2021 and beyond.

SmartMeme Studios developed the museum’s marketing design themes for specific events and configured them into multiple online animated digital ads. We used design elements from the conceptualization work to customize the look and feel of all the social media and event website pages to achieve continuity in both narrative and style. Daily maintenance of the Facebook page was the responsibility of SmartMeme Studios, Squaxin Island Tourism, and the MLRC. Banner ads were custom-designed to fit all online ad formats for both desktop/laptops and smart devices.

We developed an online digital ad placement strategy that reached the museum’s target audiences for their annual events using the latest geo-targeted online marketing services with custom designs and animations:

• Sa’Heh’Wa’Mish Days Pow Wow
• Waves of Perfection, A Culinary Journey
• Squaxin Island Salish Seaport, Olympia Harbor Days
• Water Sounds Native Art Auction & Traditional Dinner
• Squaxin Island Holiday Bazaar

Marketing concepts developed for museum special events and exhibits have taken advantage of specific physical locations that have both a tie-in to the campaign brand and the target audience, such as the Salish Ink tattoo exhibit we designed.

Since 2016, SmartMeme Studios has developed new exhibits and other location-based marketing collateral such as table-tent designs distributed county-wide to hotels and restaurants, postcards, posters, event signage, flyers, and banners, all to work in concert with the digital ad campaign themes developed.