The ROM Meets Film Twitter.

Role: Social Media Specialist

Ask: One of the ROM’s strategies was to use humour and social trends to make the museum more relatable and, well, less stuffy. When people think of a cultural institution like the ROM they don’t normally think of memes but we wanted to change that. The challenge there, of course, was being funny without trying too hard. (The last thing we wanted was to end up on r/FellowKids.) My favourite platform is Twitter so I was always on the hunt for fun trends that we could adapt.

Plan.

Necessary background information: Uncut Gems is a film produced by A24 starring an Adam Sandler who is obsessed with purchasing a rare black opal. Hilarity and stress ensues. It released in Canada over the 2019/20 holiday season.

Over the holiday weekend a friend of mine was at the museum and made an Uncut Gems joke on his IG Stories and it inspired me to do the same on the ROM Twitter feed. (Thanks Will!). Normally approvals/temperature checks are a team effort but due to the holidays I was working solo so this was a rare instance that I produced a post on my own.

When I was back at work, I took some photos of an opal in the ROM’s collection. I played around with some copy and settled on a grammar mechanism that has been popular on Film Twitter thanks to legends like Hunter Harris. To just tweet out the film title is fine, but to say “gems, uncut” is a really great “if you know, you know” kind of in-joke. The museum came off as a real fan of Uncut Gems (and that is because I am a real fan).

Since the ROM team operated with a lot of autonomy, I sent the tweet out shortly after finalizing the copy. It got some fairly good traction on its own but it wasn’t until A24 discovered it and quote tweeted it that it really took off.

Results.

As of 3 January 2020, the original tweet had been retweeted 460 times and liked 4.3k times; it also hit 189k impressions and 43k engagements. After A24 quote tweeted it, a bunch of museums started to jump in on the joke. First was the Field Museum and over the next couple of days dozens of others jumped in on it as well, including The Met, New-York Historical Society, Nova Scotia Museum, Museum of the American Revolution, National Portrait Gallery, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Gardiner Museum.

On the Film Twitter side, the account for Knives Out engaged with the Field’s Museums tweet, and tons of film fans and critics shared their appreciation as well. And then Hunter Harris herself took notice and all was good in the world.

Takeaways.

Museums can be funny! If you take the time to really understand the jokes and cultural references and find the ones that truly make sense for you to adapt, you can create content that feels authentic and relevant.

Having autonomy to post without layers of approvals is crucial for engaging authentically and reactively, especially on Twitter. This entire idea was produced and posted in under two hours. If it had taken days for approvals, the tweet might have not landed. I was able to jump into the conversation during the film’s opening, which made an extra impact.

Grammar/wording is very important for memes. The other museums that jumped on the trend didn’t use Film Twittery grammar. They should’ve read “our women, little,” “our cats, jellicle” and so on. The tweets were still great but it would’ve been soooooo much better with the proper grammar. A nitpick? Sure. But a hill I will die on nonetheless.