The Museum of Toronto (MoT) says it worked with a media buyer for the first time for its new awareness campaign, “For the T.O. You Don’t Know,” adding that it’s the museum’s most comprehensive work to date in scope and size.
With more than 25 locations featured across Toronto, the campaign aims to transform streets, sidewalks and transit spaces into immersive storytelling platforms. Wayfinding signage, including plaques, posters and sidewalk stickers, appear at Bike Share stations, subway platforms and high-traffic pedestrian areas. Each marker reveals a snapshot into Toronto’s past, from the Jamaican Patty Wars to the Children’s Protest against candy bar inflation. Many of these hidden stories were revealed through interviews with the museum’s network of local historians, architects, journalists and culture aficionados, as well as photos and archival shots from some of its partners, like City of Toronto Archives.
Visitors can scan QR codes on these markers to dive deeper into each story and access a full tour map on Google Maps.
Freelance media strategist and buyer Ed Weiss (formerly of ECHO and Bob’s Your Uncle) led media, while Berners Bowie Lee did the creative.
Rachel Hilton, director of marketing and operations for the Museum of Toronto, tells MiC this is the first of a multi-year evergreen brand awareness campaign to showcase “the hidden histories of our city,” adding that the museum has had a strong social following for many years, given its digital-only roots.
“The museum hasn’t done a comprehensive OOH media campaign of this scope or size before, but they have done a few transit shelters to drive awareness of specific exhibitions,” she says.
The MoT’s media strategy includes promotion on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, along with a series of 22 videos for the campaign that will delve deeper into the site stories, which “will be shared on IG and TikTok by the end of the month,” Hilton says.
One of those site stories is the “Dueling Spot” at Yonge and College, where Toronto’s last fatal duel took place in 1817. Museum-goers learn that Samuel Jarvis, a wealthy and notoriously corrupt man who enslaved six people, killed law student John Ridout after a dispute over an unpaid bill led to a duel challenge. Ridout missed his shot; Jarvis did not, and was later acquitted.
Another story spotlights the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women, the site of Canada’s first all-women’s prison and a separate Industrial Refuge for Girls. Opened on Aug. 28, 1880, at 1155 King St. W. (in what is now Toronto’s Liberty Village area), it was initially aimed at “reforming” women deemed “incorrigible,” such as those believed to be immoral, alcoholic or mentally unwell, but it devolved into a site of systemic abuse, including beatings, torture, medical experimentation and riots, notably in 1948 when more than 100 inmates protested harsh treatment.
Following a damning 1964 grand jury report and growing public outcry, the institution closed on April 3, 1969, and was eventually demolished.
The open-air exhibition is also doubling as an awareness campaign for the museum, which rebranded last year from Myseum to simply the Museum of Toronto.
“It was done to make us more accessible and recognizable to a broad audience and position the organization as Toronto’s city museum that brings people together to connect, share and learn from each other,” Hilton says. “The name change and the current campaign represent another step toward building awareness for Toronto’s first city museum. It’s a large spend for us, as a small non-profit organization, and for a brand play.”
As Myseum – a digital museum or a “museum without walls” – Hilton says it programmed through pop-up activations and programming around the city, and focused mostly on digital storytelling on the histories of Toronto. Since 2022, the museum has had a gallery space and two or three exhibitions a year, “so the brand’s marketing since then has been about driving traffic to our physical exhibitions,” Hilton explains.
