Hobart’s MONA celebrates its one-star reviews in new advertising campaign
The Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart has released an advertising campaign featuring the one-star reviews it has received.
The Best of Our Worst Reviews campaign, the Tasmanian attraction’s first ever brand campaign, repurposes the museum’s most savage reviews to promote how MONA and its collections have been confronting and difficult for some past visitors to understand.
Led by a series of cinematic digital videos, the 60-second advertisement provides a subversive new use for bad reviews and has been released despite, as apress release explains, MONA owner David Walsh’s “disdain for advertising”.
Introducing the campaign, MONA Head of Creative, Jardin Anderson stated “David may hate advertising, but he loves honesty. And the truth is some people love Mona, and some people hate Mona. Luckily we believe that all opinions are valid. So valid, in fact, that we’ll put them up on a billboard on Parramatta or Punt Road.
“Mona gets more one-star reviews than the Louvre, on only 10% of the visitation. David loves that stat. We also get more five-star reviews, but that’s a less cherished metric.”
The quotes featured in the campaign are collated from real-world reviews shared in the decade since MONA’s opening in 2011, with over 400 stunningly bad one-star reviews sourced from across Tripadvisor, Facebook and Google.
The campaign launches this month across social, TV on-demand, cinema, inflight and outdoor placements, with a particular focus on Tasmania’s key inbound markets of Victoria and NSW.
Merchandise featuring one-star Mona reviews, as well as an AR instagram filter, will hit the market in late March.
MONA’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Robbie Brammall commented “a bit of ad spend is a necessary evil as we help the Tassie tourism industry recover from the impacts of COVID.
“But hopefully we’re doing it in a Mona way - one that’s ill-advised and potentially disastrous.
“We’re hoping to pay for the campaign in tote and t-shirt sales.”
Click here to view more of MONA’s worst reviews.
Images show stills and the video from MONA's campaign. Credit: MONA.
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