ArtsKCGo – Culture Lives Here Campaign

As the FIFA World Cup brought global attention to Kansas City, our longtime client ArtsKC saw an opportunity to introduce ArtsKCGo.com to a broader audience. The new platform gives visitors and locals a central place to discover the city’s arts and culture, from concerts and museums to theater, dance, and visual art. Design Ranch was tasked with creating a strategic campaign that would capture attention, drive audiences to the site, and represent the full range and energy of Kansas City’s creative community. The campaign needed to feel distinctly ownable to ArtsKC, resonate with both local and global audiences, and remain relevant well beyond the World Cup. From this challenge came Culture Lives Here, a central idea with a dual meaning: culture lives throughout Kansas City, and it also lives here, on ArtsKCGo.com.

Our creative strategy brought Culture Lives Here to life through unexpected cultural juxtapositions, placing the symphony at the Gem Theater, a rap performance at the Central Library, and ballet on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum. By pairing artists and performances with places audiences might not expect to find them, the campaign challenged traditional ideas of where, how, and for whom culture lives in Kansas City.

Design Ranch led the campaign from creative concept and messaging through photography, videography, and final execution across digital advertising, billboards, posters, and print. Built for the global attention surrounding the World Cup but designed to last beyond it, Culture Lives Here gave ArtsKC a bold, flexible platform that can continue growing through new artists, places, and stories.

Impact

The campaign reached audiences at an impressive scale, delivering more than 2 million digital impressions, 11,700 paid search clicks, and over 21,000 social engagements. It also drove more than 11,000 actions across ArtsKCGo.com, connecting audiences directly to music, performance, visual art, events, and other cultural resources. Paid Search and Meta advertising both significantly exceeded engagement expectations, while Meta delivered an additional 34,000 impressions beyond the original placement. Together, these results built widespread awareness for ArtsKCGo.com and successfully encouraged thousands of people to explore Kansas City’s arts and culture.