03-02-2026
In Fall 2025, our Women in Consulting (WiC) team consulted with an iconic Lafayette art institution. Initially, we discovered the Haan Museum of Indiana Art was engaged in meaningful work in the Lafayette community, but not enough people were aware of what was occurring within the walls of the museum.
As a historical house museum with a small marketing budget, Haan required some assistance in raising awareness and appreciation for the museum’s events, and since the holiday season is a peak time, this became a pressing issue for the museum.
Over six weeks, our consulting team partnered with the museum to design a cohesive digital media strategy that could help Haan tell its story more clearly and consistently across platforms.
WiC Consultants (left to right): Jenna Hattab, Maitreyi Madhusudan, Madison Hou, Cynthia Wang (not pictured).
The Haan Museum, known for its historic architecture and rotating cultural events, sought support in building a professional and sustainable digital presence. Under the project scope, WiC was responsible for:
We established the following goals:
For the Haan Museum, stronger digital engagement meant more than likes or clicks. They wanted people coming into the museum, an increase in attendance at events and strengthened long-term community support.
Early on, we realized that a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work. Haan serves a diverse audience, from retirees and local families to Purdue students looking for affordable cultural experiences. Our first challenge was learning how to communicate one museum’s mission to multiple audiences without losing clarity or consistency.
To solve this, we built detailed audience personas that guided every design and content decision:
Individuals ages 65+ seeking cultural, slower-paced events and opportunities for community connection. Content for this group emphasized tradition, history and daytime programming.
Local families looking for fun, educational weekend activities. Messaging for this group highlighted hands-on workshops and accessible, family-friendly programming.
Young adults interested in low-cost cultural experiences. This segment responds well to modern, aesthetic visuals and clear calls to action for special events or study-friendly spaces.
Creating these personas forced us to think beyond aesthetics and into user behavior: When do these groups visit? What motivates them? How do they discover events? This research became the foundation of our recommendations and helped us justify our decisions to museum leadership during weekly check-ins.
One of our biggest deliverables was a redesigned social media and newsletter aesthetic. The team created a warm, soft-academia-inspired visual system featuring:
Each event graphic was tailored to its audience segment while still fitting the museum’s overarching brand identity.
The team extended this branding into a newly designed weekly newsletter, shown in the mockup. The newsletter used:
By syncing the visuals and messaging across platforms, users could instantly recognize Haan content. This cross-channel consistency strengthened the museum’s brand identity and created a more polished, professional digital presence.
Another challenge was managing collaboration under weekly deadlines. We maintained a shared editorial and production calendar, assigned roles within the team and coordinated weekly meetings with museum leadership. When conflicts or confusion arose, we learned to communicate clearly, ask questions early and lean on mentorship within WiC to fill knowledge gaps, especially the project managers.
By the end of the project, we delivered a complete digital marketing toolkit, including a newsletter mockup, social media recommendations, audience insights and cross-platform branding guidance that the museum could continue using beyond this project.
This experience showed us what consulting looks like outside the classroom. We weren’t just completing an assignment; we were helping a community institution tell its story more effectively. At the same time, we proved to ourselves that the skills we’re developing at Purdue, such as data-driven thinking, collaboration, communication and adaptability, translate directly into real-world impact.
For prospective students considering organizations like WiC, this project reflects what makes our work meaningful: hands-on experience, real clients and the opportunity to grow as professionals while making a difference in the community.
LiLi Alderink is a junior from Dallas, TX, studying BAIM (business analytics and information management) with a finance minor. She is the current managing director for Women in Consulting and also serves as a project manager for the BAIM Association. Additionally, she loves reading and writing and is published in Purdue's "The Exchange."
