This Museum Membership Card is 450-Million Years Old

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is one of North America’s most visited museums, showcasing art, culture, and nature from around the world and across the ages. ROM’s refreshed brand platform ROM Immortal was launched in Spring 2022 with a powerful and award-winning 6-minute short film. The campaign brings to life the extraordinary scope and gravity of the stories that live on within the Museum through its vast collection of 13 million objects, artifacts, and specimens.

Now, ROM has launched an innovative ROM Immortal activation to enhance connections with the Museum’s most important and enduring audience: members.

Introducing the ROM Immortal Membership – a membership designed to be passed on after you pass on. This immortal membership is accessed through a contest – active until March 31, 2023 – where five lucky winners will receive lifelong access to ROM, a one-of-a-kind membership card, and an extraordinary heirloom.

Working with agency partner Broken Heart Love Affair, ROM has created five unique 'membership cards' – handcrafted art pieces featuring a genuine trilobite fossil that is approximately 450-million years old. These trilobite specimens are from an entirely extinct group of marine invertebrates, related to insects, scorpions, shrimp, and lobsters.

Like the fossils they are made from, these beautifully crafted cards will withstand the test of time and enable the holder to share the ROM experience across a generation.

“What we love about this extension of the ROM Immortal campaign, is that it leverages the strong insight that ROM fosters intergenerational experiences,” said Lori Davison, ROM chief marketing and communications officer. “That is something quite unique to museums and a hugely important dimension of our brand and focus of our marketing efforts.”

Each Immortal Membership 'card' will be delivered in a handsome wooden crate designed to evoke the feeling of receiving a rare and immortal object. The crate will contain a welcome package that includes detailed information about the 'card' and the fossil, as well as a 'will' enabling recipients to list the next Immortal Member after they pass on.

“We wanted to create a membership campaign as powerful as the film that launched ROM Immortal. We were driven by the notion that a ROM membership should feel like the weighty thing it is – an enduring portal to stories that illuminate our existence,” said Shannon McCarroll, senior copywriter, Broken Heart Love Affair. “It was an incredible experience to be able to work directly with ROM to create membership cards worthy of the Museum.”

Broken Heart Love Affair has also created a social campaign built around social videos and banners, encouraging people to obtain a ROM membership and regularly experience and engage with one of the world’s foremost cultural institutions. Promos will feature unboxing videos, while digital ads will portray an older hand passing the card on to someone younger. Integrated Production for the campaign was led by sister agency Lifelong Crush while media for the campaign was handled by OMD Canada.