The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023–2025
Field Museum's 'Blood Appétit' turns a blood exhibit into dinner — Grand Effie 2025
To fight Chicago's winter slump, the Field Museum got local chefs to cook with real blood; diners earned discounted tickets — attendance rose 42%.
The Field Museum · Leo Burnett Chicago
What it had to solve
Chicago winters gutted Field Museum attendance, which fell 23% in February 2022, and its new 'Bloodsuckers: Legends to Leeches' exhibit was a hard sell in the cold. The museum had to attract locals rather than tourists, with almost no budget and no time.
How it works
The Field Museum opened 'Bloodsuckers: Legends to Leeches' in October 2023, but Chicago's brutal winters were crushing attendance — visits fell 23% in February 2022. Marketing director Maggie Holcomb and agency Leo Burnett Chicago needed a reason for locals to leave their homes in the cold.
The insight was that Chicagoans only brave the weather for great food. So the museum turned the exhibit into 'Blood Appétit': a month-long partnership with a dozen local restaurants — Mott Street, Taqueria Chingon, Frontier and others — serving limited-time dishes made with actual blood, from morcilla tacos to blood sausage pizza and blood chocolate tarts.
Diners received discount codes for the Bloodsuckers exhibit, and the campaign promoted the menus with paid social, display ads and earned media, timed to Chicago's Restaurant Week buzz. The team later described the project as one with 'no money and no time', driven by calling chef friends and asking them to put blood in a dish.
Attendance rose 42%, more than doubling the 20% target, and earned media reached roughly 490 million impressions. At the 2025 Effie Awards US gala on May 22, the campaign took the Grand Effie — the top award for marketing effectiveness — beating global Super Bowl campaigns from Verizon, CeraVe and Dove.
Why it lands
- The insight was specific and true: Chicagoans brave winter for great food, so the campaign met them where they already go.
- It made the exhibit's weird subject the star of a desirable experience instead of hiding it — blood became the draw.
- The real restaurant dishes gave the idea physical, shareable proof, generating hundreds of millions of earned impressions.
- Hyper-local partnerships meant the campaign ran on goodwill and relationships instead of a media budget.
- The 42% attendance lift proved a small nonprofit's idea could beat Fortune 500 Super Bowl ads on effectiveness.
What it did
Attendance rose 42%, more than double the 20% goal, with around 490 million earned media impressions. The campaign won the 2025 US Grand Effie, beating Verizon, CeraVe, Dove and other Super Bowl-scale campaigns.
What you can take
When a subject feels gross or niche, attach it to a behavior locals already love — the weird thing becomes the ticket to a familiar pleasure, and a seasonal problem turns into a cultural event.
Since then
The 'Blood Appétit' menus ended in March 2024, and the campaign's legacy is the 2025 US Grand Effie, where the Field Museum beat far bigger brands — a result Effie judges called proof that 'courageous, insight-driven work can come from organizations of every size'. The museum has since used the win to position itself as a venue for unconventional, hyper-local marketing.
Sources
- The Field Museum's “Blood Appétite” Wins Grand Effie at the 2025 Effie Awards US
- The Field Museum: Blood appétit
- The wild museum stunt that outscored Beyoncé's Super Bowl ad
- Blood is the main ingredient in new Field Museum partnership with local chefs
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