Background

On March 17, 2008, the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) opened its new and improved exhibit — Splash Zone — to the public. It created a place where families can actively explore the ocean together, race to find hidden kelp forest animals and cuddle up in a giant clam. Splash Zone has been specifically designed for kids 12 and under. At the same time, the new and expanded Splash Zone has interactive activities that the entire family can enjoy. The hope is that exciting encounters by children with ocean life will create lasting memories and an abiding love of the ocean.

 

Challenge

The main challenge MBA faced is that Hispanics are less likely than non-Hispanics to visit museums and aquariums because there may be a perception that these venues are not “made” for them. Also, though the exhibit is improved, it is not necessarily completely new. This limited the leverage of announcing a new exhibit, which is the traditional response-strategy used by the aquarium. Hispanics tend to have larger families than their general market counterparts, which can make visiting the aquarium expensive. Furthermore, there is lower awareness of MBA among Spanish-preferred Hispanics, and those that do know the aquarium may perceive that the aquarium is too far and hard to get to.

 

Solution

In order to build excitement about the revamped Splash Zone exhibit, we proposed the “Splash and Win” promotion to generate a word-of-mouth buzz, and drive attendance and awareness of the exhibit. The idea behind the “Splash and Win” promotion is for the agency to attend Hispanic community events and literally splash kids (with a kelp prop which the agency created). At these locations, we splashed kids while recording their reactions on video camera. Once splashed, the kids were automatically entered to win a Monterey Bay Aquarium Sailing Adventure for up to five kids, 8 and up, and two adults, plus tickets to the aquarium. People who had been splashed could also watch their video on a microsite that the agency specifically designed for the promotion www.splashandwin.com. Once there, the kids could email a link to the video of themselves to 5 friends. People who are invited to see the video could also enter to win.

 

Campaign

The campaign launched in June, 2008 and went through the end of August. The campaign consisted of community outreach, online marketing and radio endorsements prior to the splash event. For this campaign, HeadQuarters developed a microsite that provided visitors with a sign-up form, a discount coupon, directions to the aquarium, announcement of the next event and archived videos of kids being splashed. The splash videos recorded at the events were also placed on “Youtube” to help the viral aspect of the campaign. HeadQuarters also developed DJ radio scripts, a promotional flyer, a “Splash and Win” Crew T-shirt and online banners. The banners provided an additional way for people to participate in the promotion.

 

Media Plan

For the “Splash and Win” promotion, HeadQuarters created a media plan that effectively targeted Hispanic families with children in Northern California, where MBA draws a majority of its visitors and are within a reasonable driving distance from Monterey. As a result, we also targeted bilingual Hispanics and their kids, as kids are strong influencers in the selection of entertainment activities. Increasing the impact of MBA advertising among this secondary target segment was highly effective. The advertising was scheduled to coincide with the core visitation period - summer months.

 

Outreach

During the on-site splashing of kids, HeadQuarters distributed flyers announcing the promotion. Our team would then obtain permission from parents before interviewing and splashing unsuspecting kids with a bucket of artificial kelp. While all of this was happening, we recorded the kids being splashed and their reactions. An MBA representative would ask: “You’ve just been Splashed, now what are you going to do?” and capture the response. Below are the primary events at which we conducted the Splash promotion:

July 18 — CA Rodeo — Salinas
July 26 — Sonoma County Fair — Santa Rosa
August 17 — Feria Preciosa — San Mateo
August 30 — California State Fair — Sacramento

Results

The campaign was highly successful as measured through online click through rates (CTR), conversion rates and the number of views received on Youtube. The CTR reached .09%, reaching Northern Californian Hispanics with a 100% conversion rate, in other words, everyone that clicked through, signed up to the promotion. The “Splash and Win” promotion received 1,535 sign-ups, 487 coupon-offers were downloaded from the microsite, which also received 4,576 unique views for the duration of the campaign. The videos were shared with friends, with over 5000 views of the videos on Youtube. Over all, the “Splash and Win” promotion was a huge success that not only generated excitement about the improved Splash Zone exhibit, but also reminded Hispanics that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a great place to take their entire family.