$600K
in earned media attention
150%
growth in fan engagement
Client Intro
The International Spy Museum (SPY) is an independent nonprofit museum which documents the tradecraft, history, and contemporary role of espionage. It holds the largest collection of international espionage artifacts on public display. The Museum opened in 2002 in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, DC, and relocated to L’Enfant Plaza in 2019.
Challenge
The International Spy Museum was moving across town to open a new, bigger and better, purpose-built home, with a totally immersive and completely reimagined exhibit experience.
While the museum was closed for more than four months, DMI was tasked with keeping Spy Museum fans engaged and generating buzz leading up to the opening of the new museum.
Solution
The new museum was going to be totally immersive, putting visitors into the shoes of a spy, challenging their assumptions, putting their skills to the test, and altering their perspective forever.
We built a completely mobile, GPS enabled, city-wide scavenger hunt. We recruited local agents to crack clues in order to find physical and digital dead drops hidden in the Washington DC area and claim a secret prize.
Each dead drop was hidden at a famous spy site, from hotels where clandestine meetings occurred, to parks where actual dead drops were left by real spies. The clues and locations represented moments in local spy history, from 1777 up to the opening of the new Spy Museum on 5-12-2019.
Technologies and Capabilities
Digital Experience
Web Development
Media Services
Impact
With just organic promotion of the activation, the first dead drop was picked up only 52 minutes after it was released. With each of the six clue releases, most prizes were claimed within just a few hours, with more and more fans engaging each week.
The activation was a major hit with the Spy Museum fans for a combined 150% engagement rate. It generated buzz in the DC metro area, garnering earned media attention worth an additional $600k.
Most importantly, we achieved our goal of building excitement and awareness for the museum leading up to the opening.
About DMI
DMI is a leading global provider of digital services working at the intersection of public and private sectors. With broad capabilities across IT managed services, cybersecurity, cloud migration and application development, DMI provides onsite and remote support to clients within governments, healthcare, financial services, transportation, manufacturing, and other critical infrastructure sectors. DMI’s commitment to excellence in service delivery has resulted in dramatic growth, with clients among all fifteen U.S. Federal Departments and hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies.
