Making Museums Must-See Travel Destinations for All

It’s about creating desire right from the start

Here’s a campaign from Finland that seeks to entwine museum visits with popular culture. To that end, the Finnish Museum Card, a 12-month pass, places Finland’s beloved art institutions as vital parts of the travel experience. 

Travelers can book visits that include multiple museums, meals and transportation, all booked through the “Museum Trips” program.

And celebs may be a part of the experience, too. The first trips were hosted by Jorma Uotinen and Katja Ståhl—well-known among the Finns within dance and TV.

Recently, the initiative opened a travel pop-up shop in Mall of Tripla—one of Helsinki’s busiest shopping destinations. It existed as an actual travel agency with brochure racks, a service counter, bum bags and more. It’s fashioned after a classic high street travel shop—”the kind that used to anchor every town center before the internet made them disappear.”

The idea is to get shoppers who likely had no intention of visiting one of the country’s many museums and can now find themselves leafing through physical brochures as they reconsider their cultural outings. 

The Museum Card partnered with SEK on the effort. “People do visit museums while they are on holiday, but the museum is rarely the reason they went,” says agency creative director, Samuel Räikkönen. “Hotels, airlines, experience packages—they all know how to create desire. Museums haven’t had to. We wanted to change the frame entirely: what if a museum visit wasn’t the dutiful cultural stop, but the whole reason for the trip?”

In addition to the live experience, the campaign runs across social media, online video, radio, and digital display advertising. The effort also used Museum Cards’ own channels, including their newsletters, and appears in Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest newspaper.

“Museum Trips is a real product now, not a one-time activation,” Räikkönen added.