Exquisite Creatures | Crystal Bridges

The Method

So, to thread our three-sided messaging needle, we brought out a process I had developed over the course of our last exhibition, Annie Leibovitz at Work.

For Annie (my first exhibition project of this scale as lead writer from start to finish), I had worked with the Interpretation Content Specialist assigned to the exhibition to create messaging that was more dynamic and energetic than anything we’d put out in my tenure at the museum. And we saw the results with a marked uptick over the spring show’s attendance.

In the past, a single copywriter assigned to an exhibition (for a time, the institution’s only copywriter) would brainstorm selling points with the full department in a single sprint/workshop and then develop a complete messaging framework and campaign copy package.

After some editing and stakeholder review, it would then go out into the world as finished creative (using visuals from the assigned designer.)

For Annie, by contrast, I’d worked collaboratively with the exhibition’s interpretation SME over a series of long evenings, teasing out pillar ideas and phrases from her casual descriptions of Leibovitz’s work.

From those work sessions, we were able to connect specific messages with channels and audiences. We already knew some of the big elements of the ad plan (such as the full page ad going in Conde Nast’s Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Digest), so we pulled out key ideas like the pairing “iconic” and “daring” to contrast Leibovitz’s well-known works with her new, must-see commissions.

My ad for Annie Leibovitz at Work that ran in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Digest.

I wanted that same level of specificity and strategic writing for EC, but I also wanted to produce it consistently.

I’m a big fan of Brain Traffic’s Content Strategy Quad that puts workflow and process as the foundation of good editorial substance.

So, to help us get out of the “Wild West” days of relying on a solo writer for each project who may or may not have strategy experience, I developed a process rooted in design thinking that helped the whole team connect to audiences and develop great content.

In that process, an assigned copywriter still takes on the brunt of drafting the project’s content (in this case, me), but they don’t start from selling points or a blank page.

Instead, I facilitated workshops and messaging sprints that built empathy for the audience’s perspective.

An actual whiteboard from our “messaging sprint”.

As a team, we systematically reviewed each audience persona, imagined ourselves in their shoes, and described the words, phrases, and ideas that we would need to believe or respond to in order to attend the exhibition and move through the sales funnel.

As patterns emerged, I’d capture them on a dedicated board and organize messages into core pillars, group audiences that would respond to similar messages, and identify content formats and types that suited those messages especially well.

From there, the copywriter would meet with other teams to check patterns against their own insights (e.g., what PR & Social Media had seen as story/pitch opportunities, what Creative was developing on the visual front, what Marketing Strategy saw in the larger dataset).

They’d develop a messaging framework and codify how ads and messages would evolve throughout the campaign’s lifespan, how phrasing would need to be adjusted per persona, and what channels and content formats would work best for each audience and funnel stage.

A back-and-forth of internal and stakeholder reviews would happen, and our findings would be shared out across the whole department for alignment.

In short, by starting with data, empathy, and a clear process, we turned copywriters into strategists. And the quality of the work proved the extra time was worth it.