Where no man's gone before--Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience

Here's a really fun immersive campaign for the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience is a big exhibit by EMS Entertainment that brings entertainment to education. In this case, it teaches museum goers about the science (both real and speculative) behind that beloved show. Museum goers isn't quite the right way to say it, though. Perhaps cadets would be a better choice as these participants aren't just learning about science and aviation but are doing so under the guise of being recruited and trained to become members of Starfleet.

The world premiere of this traveling exhibit was launched recently, by Acart Communications, through a multi-layered campaign. First it began with a teaser video (which you can see below) where people spotted a "UFO." Naturally the video fueled speculation and discussion on social media and Reddit.

This teaser was followed by an intercepted message by the Aviation Museum itself.

At the same time, they brought the campaign offline into the real world with installations of the crashed shuttle nacelle appearing in a few locations. Starfleet Academy members were on hand to investigate with tricorders, while security officers "guarded" it. If onlookers asked what was going on, they were handed a metal card with a url encouraging them to: Join Stafleet Academy.

If that wasn't enough, a replica of Captain Kirk's famous captain's chair also made the rounds of malls and events, allowing regular folks to get all gussied up like they were part of Starfleet, read authentic Captain Kirk lines (hopefully in the SAME stilted....MANNER) into a moderated Twitter feed.

In addition to the stunts and events, the campaign was supported by traditional media in the form of print and out of home. On the Metro Ottawa print, by the way, they did a news story in Klingon. (!)

I hope the results are great because this will make for one heck of a fun case study. Either way it's a neat idea, and what sounds like a great exhibit. Kudos to CBS for approving of the use of their intellectual property, too. Check out some more photos below.

Client: Canada Aviation and Space Museum
Agency: Acart Communications
Creative Director/Copywriter: Tom Megginson
Head of Experiential: Patrick Kavanagh
Experiential Project Manager: Jean-Rene Ello
Executive Creative Director: John Staresinic
Associate Creative Director: Vernon Lai
Account Director: Craig Cebryk
Graphic Designer: Patrick Harris
Illustration: Marc Audet, Rocket 57 Illustration
Video Producer/Director/French Adaptation: Emmanuelle Coutu
Videographers: Jérémy Prud'homme , Steven Desjardins
Digital Strategy: Charles Crosbie
Coding: Leighton Rodney
Klingon Adaptations: Klingon Language Institute
Production Managers: Sarah Deschamps, Lynn Norris