Date a Dino!
We built out Teddy’s profile including a catchy bio/interests and made sure it was obvious that this was is a Dinosaur at the Museum (that’s his job). We also posted multiple photos of Teddy so you could see he is a fun guy. Profiles must be linked to a Facebook profile, so we had to create a Facebook account for Teddy as well. One of the great/slightly terrifying features of Tinder is the location-aware capabilities, we keep Teddy’s discoverability down to 2kms in the hopes of engaging people onsite at #FNLROM. That said, we also connect with a lot of people not at the museum on a Friday night and have the opportunity to tell them about #FNLROM (ROI!).
Though I too like the author am “off the market” I have heard the gamut of Tinder stories – nothing however, compares to this. Teddy the T-Rex at the Royal Ontario Museum is on Tinder! That’s right ladies and gents, the dino is on the market with witty pick-up lines and other banter to get you into the museum to pay him a visit.
As stated in the article, the goal of this ploy on one of the most popular dating apps is to get people engaged with the museum and its collections in a fun and surprising way. This strongly resonates with Antenna’s views on audience engagement: surprise and delight visitors with stories that you cannot find elsewhere. Since the radius in which you can “match” with Teddy is only 2 kilometers, the targeted audience actually has to capability to follow through and pay him a visit.
I thought it worthy to give this museum and digital team a shout-out, in hopes to encourage further creativity with modern technologies from others. The old-school methods of engaging audiences just aren’t going to cut it anymore, unique content that grabs audiences (in this case, with really tiny T-rex arms!) in unexpected ways will surely put your museum on the map.
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