The Weitzman Museum
Preserving history in the digital age.
Jewish American History Is American History.
The Weitzman, formerly the National Museum of American Jewish History, sits on Independence Mall in Philadelphia and tells the story of Jewish American life as a story of American life. Brand Knew has been the museum’s digital growth partner since 2019, and as the museum itself has evolved, including its rebrand to The Weitzman, Brand Knew’s role has expanded with it: from a single exhibition launch to the full digital engine behind the museum’s brand, ecommerce, events, and audience growth. Over the last several years, we have delivered stand-out results:
- $2.8M+ in Museum Store revenue generated since 2023, including its first $1M+ year in 2024
- 6.1M impressions and 700K engagements from 2025 Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM) alone
- 6x average blended ROAS on Meta and Google store campaigns
- 40+ paid event campaigns run, with top performers landing ticket sales under a $30 CPA
Designing an Identity as Significant as the Story.
A museum’s digital presence has to do a lot at once: sell tickets, sell merchandise, grow a following, and make a compelling case for why its subject matter matters, all while competing for attention against every other cultural institution and consumer brand online. The Weitzman needed a partner who could treat its digital presence less like a marketing channel and more like a growth business, with the paid media discipline, creative instincts, and ecommerce chops to match.
Brand Knew first developed new digital brand guidelines and rebuilt the museum’s most-trafficked web pages into a sleek, mobile-first experience, all completed in just nine weeks. The redesign paid off immediately: page views rose 45%, SEO traffic rose 32%, mobile usage rose 150%, and traffic to the Exhibitions and Collections pages jumped 2,855%.
Designing an Identity as Significant as the Story.
A museum’s digital presence has to do a lot at once: sell tickets, sell merchandise, grow a following, and make a compelling case for why its subject matter matters, all while competing for attention against every other cultural institution and consumer brand online. The Weitzman needed a partner who could treat its digital presence less like a marketing channel and more like a growth business, with the paid media discipline, creative instincts, and ecommerce chops to match.
Brand Knew first developed new digital brand guidelines and rebuilt the museum’s most-trafficked web pages into a sleek, mobile-first experience, all completed in just nine weeks. The redesign paid off immediately: page views rose 45%, SEO traffic rose 32%, mobile usage rose 150%, and traffic to the Exhibitions and Collections pages jumped 2,855%.
Where It Started: Notorious RBG.
One of Brand Knew’s first projects with the museum was to promote the launch of their new exhibit, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pairing creative direction, paid media strategy, and web expertise to turn a single exhibition into a digital growth moment. The results set the tone for everything that followed: the exhibit drove nearly as much attendance in its four-month run as the museum had seen in the entire year prior, putting it on pace to double 2019 attendance before the pandemic interrupted momentum.
A Museum Store That Became a Real Business.
What started as a secondary revenue line is now one of the museum’s most reliable growth engines. Since 2023, the Museum Store has generated more than $2.8M in online revenue, with over $900K directly attributed to paid media. 2024 was the store’s first $1M+ year, powered by always-on Meta and Google campaigns averaging a 6x blended ROAS. Brand Knew’s paid media strategy has driven the majority of store revenue each month since the campaign’s launch, peaking at 88% in January 2026.
Ticketing and Programming, Systemized.
Brand Knew runs paid support behind more than 40 event campaigns a year, including speaker series, book launches, concerts, livestreams, family programming, and year-end giving pushes. The strongest campaigns consistently land ticket sales under a $30 CPA, and evergreen free-admission campaigns hold a steady $26–$30 CPA week over week, giving the museum a dependable baseline of visitation independent of any single program push.
Ticketing and Programming, Systemized.
Brand Knew runs paid support behind more than 40 event campaigns a year, including speaker series, book launches, concerts, livestreams, family programming, and year-end giving pushes. The strongest campaigns consistently land ticket sales under a $30 CPA, and evergreen free-admission campaigns hold a steady $26–$30 CPA week over week, giving the museum a dependable baseline of visitation independent of any single program push.
Jewish American Heritage Month, at Scale.
JAHM has grown into the single biggest moment on the museum’s calendar, and 2025 marked its most efficient year yet. Brand Knew scaled paid spend by 70% and that investment returned 6.1M impressions, 696K engagements, 802K video views, up 74%, 84%, and 79% year over year, respectively.
Three new channels drove that efficiency. TikTok delivered the most cost-efficient awareness of the entire program at $0.005 per view. Programmatic buying generated 2.9M impressions, the most efficient reach across every channel in the mix. A dedicated email lead-generation push captured 1,500 new emails, building an owned audience the museum can nurture well beyond the month itself. Meta still carried the largest share of spend, driving 2.3M impressions and 388K engagements, while supporting ticket sales, livestream promotion, and lead gen in parallel.
The Moment That Made National News.
In August 2020, a golden opportunity presented itself to NMAJH when Donald Trump’s televised mispronunciation of “Yosemite” as “Yo semite” made national headlines. Brand Knew noticed the museum already sold a “Yo Semite” t-shirt, and we moved fast. A single cheeky post, paired with targeted outreach and paid amplification, turned a passing news cycle into a defining brand moment: over 4 million people reached, thousands of shirts sold, and national news coverage for the museum. In 13 days, the moment generated more than $350K in Museum Store revenue, $250K of it from the shirt itself, while the halo effect pulled in 10x the museum’s typical monthly Facebook follower growth in a single week.
It’s a reminder of what the partnership is really built for: not just steady, disciplined growth, but the instinct to spot an opportunity and move on it before it passes.
The Moment That Made National News.
In August 2020, a golden opportunity presented itself to NMAJH when Donald Trump’s televised mispronunciation of “Yosemite” as “Yo semite” made national headlines. Brand Knew noticed the museum already sold a “Yo Semite” t-shirt, and we moved fast. A single cheeky post, paired with targeted outreach and paid amplification, turned a passing news cycle into a defining brand moment: over 4 million people reached, thousands of shirts sold, and national news coverage for the museum. In 13 days, the moment generated more than $350K in Museum Store revenue, $250K of it from the shirt itself, while the halo effect pulled in 10x the museum’s typical monthly Facebook follower growth in a single week.
It’s a reminder of what the partnership is really built for: not just steady, disciplined growth, but the instinct to spot an opportunity and move on it before it passes.
The Bigger Picture.
What began as a single exhibition launch in 2019 became a full digital growth partnership spanning brand, web, ecommerce, paid media, and events. The throughline across every chapter is the same: pair sharp creative instincts with disciplined, data-informed paid media, and treat every channel — social, search, email, programmatic — as part of one connected growth engine.
