Situation

Attendance at many nonprofit, visitor-serving organizations has declined. At the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, 2019 attendance was trending down 7.8% in the summer compared to 2018 numbers. The majority of those who were visiting the library were older and more familiar with JFK’s legacy.

Brief

In order to attract more visitors, the library wanted to cast a wider net and attract younger audiences who were not as familiar with JFK. They saw the opportunity to use the momentous occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission as a way to own a piece of the conversation about the historic event and to raise awareness for JFK’s connection to it.

Objectives

1. Raise awareness for JFK’s legacy

2. Drive engagement with the library online and in-person

The Idea

Reimagine the Apollo 11 Mission as if it happened today.

JFK Moonshot was a fully-synchronized augmented reality experience of Apollo 11 where every moment, maneuver, and milestone unfolded in real time, second-by-second, precisely 50 years later.

Census data showed that 62% of the population was not alive at the time of the Apollo 11 launch. Additionally, a UVA study showed those under 60 did not associate JFK with the moon landing as much as their elders did. Young people did not know who Kennedy was and did not associate him with being pivotal to the moon landing.

A strategic unlock came when we poured through pictures of the crowd at the Apollo 11 launch in 1969 juxtaposed against images from modern day live events. How we experience events is drastically different. Today, we view them through our phones so that the physical and digital become one. We then share it through social media. This is how history-in-the-making events are experienced now and one of the reasons that leveraging social media along with tech like augmented reality can improve memory recall by as much as 70%.

At precisely 9:32 AM on July 16th at the JFK Library in Boston, we launched one of the largest AR objects ever created—a 363-foot, full-scale replica of the Saturn V rocket.

To scale the experience for those not in attendance, we did two things: We livestreamed the first-of-its-kind AR experience on Twitch where some of the most popular streamers provided a “play through” of the action. Additionally, the Moonshot app allowed allowed kids of all ages to launch their own virtual rockets anywhere and share it on social media.

For the next four days, users could track the mission in AR as events unfolded. We continued streaming the mission on Twitch non-stop, where streamer BonsaiBaby re-enacted and simul-casted moments from the mission with over 100 hours of rare, archival JFK and NASA footage. Viewers could practice their own moon landings with interactive AR games while also testing their JFK knowledge

During the course of our campaign, the JFK Presidential Library and Museum reversed the nationwide trend of declining museum attendance with a 5% increase in attendance, along with:

• 110,000+ rocket launches around the world

• 140,000+ downloads of the app

• 8x more social mentions that competitive museums

• 240,000,000+ global brand impressions

Furthermore, a post campaign survey revealed an 11% increase related to JFK inspiring “innovation in American science and technology”.