National Retail PR, Marketing & Branding Campaign (2025)
Hundreds of museum stores across the U.S. enjoyed an increase in foot traffic and sales during our third year of leading Museum Store Sunday’s retail PR, marketing and branding efforts. Discover how we earned coverage for museums and their stores in 230+ media outlets like Forbes, CBS, NBC, NPR, The Atlantic and Chicago Tribune while collaborating with dozens of influencers and celebrities like Harvey Guillén.
Each year on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, museum stores around the world come together for Museum Store Sunday—an annual celebration of inspired, purpose-driven shopping. Founded by the Museum Store Association in 2017, the initiative invites holiday shoppers to discover distinctive, often locally made gifts while spotlighting the meaningful role museum stores play in their communities.
Purchases made during the event directly support artists, small businesses and the cultural institutions that preserve and share our collective stories, all during one of the most competitive retail weekends of the year.
We were honored to partner with the association once again in 2025, building on the momentum of our record-setting campaigns in 2023 and 2024. Our nonprofit retail PR, marketing and branding efforts generated more than 230 media placements across broadcast, digital, print and radio channels, delivering an estimated $7.2 million in advertising value equivalency (AVE) with 19.6 million media impressions.
We distributed two press releases as part of Museum Store Sunday’s 2025 campaign. The first press release announced the 2025 date, shared gift ideas and explained how purchases support museums and cultural institutions. The second press release announced the initiative’s collaboration with actor Harvey Guillén.
Our PR efforts earned more than 230 pieces of coverage across TV, digital, print and radio outlets with an advertising value equivalency (AVE) of $7.2 million based on 19.6 million estimated media impressions—up from 210 pieces of coverage and an AVE of $6.8 million based on 18.4 million media impressions from the previous year’s campaign.
Several factors contributed to these successes, including multiple gift guide features in national publications, as well as TV and newspaper features in dozens of local markets. Gift guides drove millions of impressions while encouraging direct sales for 100+ museum stores across the country.
Museum Store Sunday and participating museum stores were featured and mentioned in respected national publications, including Forbes, The Atlantic, CO by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Observer, AFAR and IndieWire.
The San Diego Union-Tribune also wrote an in-depth feature on Museum Store Sunday, which was picked up by several news sites like MSN and Yahoo, contributing to the campaign’s growth in reach and AVE.
The Postcard Agency also managed the brand’s social media accounts, organized a national ad campaign to promote store locator usage and designed a suite of creative branded assets to communicate Museum Store Sunday’s story across channels. The branded materials—including customizable social media graphics and email signature templates—were packaged into an updated Participant Tool Kit used by hundreds of participating museum stores.
Stores actively adopted the campaign visuals, sharing branded content across their own social platforms and frequently tagging Museum Store Sunday as a collaborator to extend reach and visibility.
In parallel, a newly launched blog, introduced in May 2025, quickly became a hub for audience engagement. Dozens of stores contributed gift guide recommendations and nominated artists for “Meet the Maker” features, reinforcing the initiative’s focus on creativity and local impact.
The social media, advertising and content marketing strategy delivered measurable digital growth, with a 3,781% year-over-year increase in store locator usage. Similarly, organic search traffic increased at an astronomical pace month-over-month. This sustained momentum reflected the success of the SEO-driven approach and ongoing content optimization to drive store sales not only in 2025, but for many years to come.
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