The Ashmolean

Advertising Oxford’s
art & history haven

The Ashmolean regularly promotes temporary exhibitions, but what about its incredible permanent collection? It’s a conundrum many museums face: how to keep the public interested in something that’s fundamentally not new. Or in this case, literally ancient.

THE BRIEF

With millions of potential visitors identified as relatively unaware of its permanent collection, the Ashmolean needed a new way to articulate its value. The mission was to celebrate but also consolidate the breadth on offer, distilling it into a new and compelling campaign.

Takes You Back

a unifying message

As an antidote to overwhelm, we summed up the collection’s single overarching value; its ability to take you back. This message could be flavoured differently for different facets of the collection, without having to ever fundamentally change. The stage was set for our campaign.

Bravo Paulo

enjoying stories

Museums have no reason to sound dull. We worked closely with the Ashmolean’s curators to pen a series of fun-but-true stories celebrating collection highlights, supported with freshly shot images literally ‘taking readers back’ to the stagings of the various times and places at play.