Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21

Located within the national historic site of Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the museum occupies part of the terminal where, from the years 1928 to 1971, almost a million immigrants arriving by ship first set foot in Canada.

Through oral histories, first-person accounts, artifacts and genealogy resources to contemporary exhibitions, podcasts and digital resources, the museum explores themes of history and society in the context of citizenship and belonging—for immigrants, people born in Canada and Indigenous Peoples.

We were excited to be selected as the digital media agency for this important organization.

Our first task was to work with the museum’s team to create a bilingual digital advertising strategy. From there, our ongoing tasks have been to manage the annual digital media budget and to write, design and implement the creative for the museum’s digital display, paid search, YouTube and Meta advertising, and boosted content in English and French.

Our strategy considers the different messaging needed to appeal to the various markets. These include national tourism feeder markets—what makes the museum an attractive activity for people visiting Nova Scotia? For local markets, we consider not only parents, educators and history buffs, but also cruise ship visitors and other tourists who are visiting the Halifax Waterfront. Podcast downloads take a more content-specific approach, while special-event ads leverage a mix of paid, organic and boosted content that best suits the event itself.

Our tactics vary in different advertising markets across the country, but are always rooted in our agency’s digital optimization strategy process—targeting users and channels that don’t just deliver clicks, but that offer the best quality engagement with the ads, driving people to visit the website, spend time with the museum’s digital resources, download podcast episodes and physically visit the museum in person.

For the creative itself, we integrate the visuals with that of the museum’s offerings, whether that be heartwarming historical images of immigration or playful illustrations of an exhibition. We create animated ads to deliver maximum impact and engagement.

Each month, we submit a performance report that includes recommendations for ongoing optimization, as well as a summary of relevant tourism industry trends to help guide our current and future efforts.

Our first year digital media results delivered an increase of 16% over our targets—exceptional performance that we intend to beat in successive years.