The World’s First MEME Museum

K11 Art Mall opened in 2009 as the world’s first museum-retail destination. For over 10 years, K11 Art Mall have played host to a steady stream of innovative and cutting-edge cultural experiences. In recent years, other brands have started to apply art and commerce business models while targeting Gen Z.
How can K11 Art Mall breakthrough? Generation Z is the most in-demand generation for retailers. Today, our task is to make K11 Art Mall an aspirational destination for Gen Zs.
Gen Z express their humour and creativity in a new digital medium, MEMES. Today, memes are a universal digital language, a picture or simple joke often creates ripples across the globe.
K11 Art Mall identified a strategic partnership with 9GAG, one of the world’s leading meme content platforms and a go-to destination for meme artists.
The idea: Curate a meme experience beyond Gen Z’s imagination. Entice their curiosity with a fully curated meme-centic art experience offering meme content, 4D experiences, board games, NFT artworks and more.
9GAG is the expert in Memes and Meme culture, but had never executed an offline event. K11 Art Mall is Hong Kong’s expert in art exhibitions. They offered a specialized art and marketing team to curate an exhibition in the high traffic and prime location of Tsim Sha Tsui.
K11 Art Mall tapped into Gen Z’s witty Zeitgeist by curating The World’s First MEME Museum. It was a 4D experience - in the midst of the pandemic - when this hyper-social generation had been socially distancing. The experience served as their reconnection to the real world – Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch & Tech.
The Meme Museum has broken all internal records, fast becoming K11 Art Mall’s most-attended exhibition since its opening 10 years ago. The successful execution of Meme Museum also helped increase traffic to K11 Art Mall - foot traffic grew 20% during the period. Over 70% of the exhibition attendees were Gen Z, with 50% being new to K11 Art Mall, which demonstrates this edgy and innovative art and cultural content successfully garnered the attention and curiosity of young Hong Kong consumers.