Creative Director

Agency:
Edelman

Client:
Wildlife Conservation Society

Campaign:
120 Ways NYC is Wild

Wildlife Conservation Society was looking to celebrate 120 years of saving wildlife while raising awareness and traffic to their parks. After 20 years of stagnant traffic, they were looking to be top of mind with New Yorkers as a great place to spend their spring and summer weekends (or weekdays!).

The organization owns and/or manages the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo. While the parks are largely known as a tourist attraction, the goal was to target the residents of the New York metropolitan area and remind them how close their wild neighbors are.

During our research, we uncovered two insights from analyzing the behavior of millennials in NYC. First, New Yorkers love to be surprised by New York. Additionally, the use of smart phones and social sharing on platforms such as Instagram drive that have-to-be-here feeling with this demographic.

We launched 120 Ways NY is Wild with a website featuring a list of 120 animals and locations across the five parks and boroughs of New York City. The list featured iconic attractions ranging from the NY Public Library lion statues, to the sea lions that call the New York Aquarium home. We invited participants to join us on an urban photo safari by capturing images of all the "ways" listed on the site. A user would snap and post on Twitter or Instagram tagging the photo with #NYisWild.

We were successful in both increasing awareness as well as driving attendance to the smaller parks. Attendance increased from the previous year by as much as 4.8%.

4,386 total registrants, with 45% of participants visiting at least 2 parks.

11,348 photos submitted.

There were 22,030 uses of #NYisWild on Twitter and Instagram resulting in 52MM total impressions.

Overall, there has been a 57% lift in social conversation year over year with the Bronx Zoo seeing an increase of 117% in social conversation and the Queens Zoo, a staggering 407% increase.

From a paid media perspective we had over 436 MM Impressions, 936K social engagements and over 200K clicks to NYisWild.com