Explaining the unexplainable

The Museum’s new facility was world-class. The challenge was making sure Dallas — and beyond — knew it existed. As agency of record, we were tasked with building the Museum’s first full-scale brand awareness campaign: increasing visibility, driving foot traffic, and ensuring the institution’s expanded offerings reached the audiences who needed them most — from casual visitors to school groups to donors.

Every campaign needs a truth at its center. Ours was this: the history of the Holocaust isn’t distant — it lives in this city, in this building, in the stories of the survivors who founded it. “Humanity Lives Here” became the campaign’s anchor. It positioned the Museum not just as a place of remembrance but as a living institution — one where the past is present, where education leads to action, and where the weight of history demands something of every visitor who walks through the door. The line did what the best campaign lines do: it said everything, simply.

Our team explored a variety of concepts that embodied our mission to generate awareness for the Museum’s program offerings, while driving visits to the physical space in downtown Dallas.

What began with a website and a grand opening campaign has grown into one of our most enduring partnerships. Since 2018, we have served as the Museum’s agency of record — managing digital strategy, photography, videography, drone footage, print, paid media, and ongoing campaigns across every channel. Seven years in, the institution has more than doubled its annual visitors. The work continues because the mission does.

A museum of this scale needs a digital platform that works as hard as its staff. Beyond the redesign, we built the infrastructure behind it — a custom CMS, an integrated payment system, and a Salesforce-powered CRM that gave the Museum team real control over their content, their ticketing, and their donor relationships. The result was a site that could do things the previous one couldn’t: sell tickets online, serve educators with research materials, update exhibits in real time, and scale alongside an institution that was growing rapidly in both reach and ambition.

Thirty days before the grand opening, we launched a full-channel campaign — paid media, digital, out-of-home, and earned coverage — designed to ensure the Museum’s new chapter began with the visibility it deserved. The ribbon-cutting brought together Holocaust survivors, the Mayor of Dallas, and the Governor of Texas. It was the kind of moment that happens once — and we made sure the city was ready for it.

The numbers tell part of the story. In 2018, the Museum welcomed 80,000 visitors. Today, more than 200,000 people visit every year — a 150% increase over the course of our partnership. But the mission of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum isn’t measured in visits alone. It’s measured in students who leave changed, in communities who engage with difficult history, and in a city that takes seriously its responsibility to remember. We are proud to be part of that work. And we are not done.