Guerrilla Marketing: The MAX’s Make Your Mark Campaign Mark Tullos (President/CEO) and Kasey Mosley (Youth Educator), Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience (The MAX), Meridian, Mississippi
All museums have been struggling to rebound from the setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Certainly, one of the most significant losses over the past two years has been the absence of children’s voices in our galleries. One strategy that the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience (The MAX) has launched is our “Make your Mark” campaign. This internal effort has proven to be an effective way to reach teachers and school counselors where the real decisions about field trips take root. We conducted this campaign in February of 2020 and saw our field trip calendar populated to capacity. Those bookings fell away due to coronavirus closings and restrictions. We relaunched the campaign in March 2022 to welcome schools back to our museum. We created printed collateral including a letter of invitation (authored by a significant artist, in our case, it was Cheryl Henson from the Jim Henson Foundation), a flyer illustrating the field trip experience, and a door
hanger advertising our free teacher admission policy. We identified public and private schools, as well as homeschool co-ops, in a five-county region for our campaign. We acquired data on the number of teachers at each school and prepared bundles of collateral for each school. On the week of the campaign, each museum staff member signed up to visit particular schools and districts. We rented a car to be used for the week and staff members reserved the car to make deliveries in a way that fit their schedule. We encouraged staff members to go in teams of two. Everyone participated, including our Museum President! Here is an example of our Make Your Mark Campaign instructions: • Call the school the day before you go to let them know you will be coming and approximately what time you should arrive. Ask about their visitor policies 65
