The challenge: in an intensely competitive market for families’ leisure time and dollars, what’s the most effective way to convince people that your fun is more fun per dollar than the other fun out there? Well, good advertising tells people something; great advertising makes people feel something, and that’s consistently been our objective with Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari’s messaging: make audiences viscerally feel the thrills, laughter and togetherness (and don’t you dare forget value!) of a visit to their parks.
The centerpiece of each season’s Holiday World campaign is TV/streaming video. Ever mindful to keep fun in the starring role, we’ve had quite a bit of fun ourselves over the years creating the parks’ TV/video messaging. Three spots from recent years stand out, for different reasons: “That’s How They Get You,” “Family Safari,” and “What’s Your Favorite Holiday?”.
That’s How They Get You
That’s How They Get You was the main broadcast TV ad for Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari for that season. The only (only!) goal it had to achieve was to drive up park attendance by telling a :30 second story that inspired a lot of people to go there—fairly straightforward to say, not as easy to pull off. The way we went about (and eventually succeeded at) the task was to:
- Convey (as ever) the thrilling, awesome experience of being at the park, and
- Without undermining #1, spotlight the unique-to-Holiday-World benefit of their great value, best embodied by their famous offer of free soft drinks, free parking, and free sunscreen to parkgoers.
One visit to any of the parks’ surcharging, upselling competitors proves the excellent value of this deal. Just heard recited in an ad, though, it can sound too good to be true, and inspire skepticism. That skepticism – especially coming from the number one skeptic of all time: Dad – drove the ad’s concept: a dad brings his family to Holiday World, and over the course of the spot, his skepticism is morphed into appreciation by the family fun and genuine value he encounters. Standout performances from the cast drive the message home, especially the curmudgeonly dad and the irrepressible young park attendant who delivers the ad’s memorable final line from atop The Voyage, the park’s award-winning wooden rollercoaster: “You want the most fun for your family dollar, and at Holiday World, we get you …we’re just not out to get you.”
Family Safari
Typically, Holiday World ads feature both the dry (Holiday World: roller coasters and all other non-bathing-suit rides) and wet (Splashin’ Safari: all the bathing suit rides: water coasters, slides and rides) parks together, since a single ticket grants access to both during the 17 weeks when both are open. But we bucked this trend with Family Safari, a spot focused solely on the water park. This allowed for more targeted media placements (e.g. in the dead of summer, when everyone’s looking to cool off), plus, as the park wasn’t planning any new water attractions for a while, it could run for multiple years in broadcast and online channels, stretching marketing dollars. The spot leans into the “Safari” part of the park name: a Mom-narrated, National Geographic-spoofing travelogue documenting an explorer family’s wild adventures “on safari.” They document such wildlife as a crocodile (friendly, fluffy park mascot Safari Sam), a Wildebeest (one of the park’s waterslides), and a “flock of short-billed sippers (four giggling kids in ballcaps, slurping down colorful Icee drinks)” before experiencing some first-hand adventures, which the audience experiences from their POV in you-are-there Go-Pro sequences on Cheetah Chase and Mammoth, two of the park’s most celebrated and thrilling water coasters.
What’s Your Favorite Holiday?
With the rise of YouTube and other clip-based social media apps came a demand for more – much, much more – video-based ad content. The challenge became to minimize production costs while keeping as much value (production, entertainment and advertorial) as possible up on the screen. The online-only What’s Your Favorite Holiday? was our reply to the challenge. With a lean, mean production crew of three and a run ‘n’ gun shooting approach, we were able to let story, a charismatic cast, fast-paced, playful editing and a catchy, high-energy rock song from a licensed music catalog elevate the piece into a super-fun, compelling ad for a fraction of the cost of a standard TV spot. In it, three preteen girlfriends contemplate what each’s favorite holiday is. Their deliberations play out over the rest of the energetic spot; Holiday World’s multiple holiday-themed park sections provide the perfect backdrop, with lots of on-ride action and quick cuts to ratchet up the excitement.
Mediums pop up, disappear, rise, sink, and morph …it never really stands still. Constant, though, is the need for attention-grabbing advertisements to draw consumers’ eyes to goods and services—whatever forms those ads may take. Through the years, the hard-won marketing victories and nearly boundless creativity of doing Holiday World’s TV/streaming ads has been a source of enormous pride and quite a lot of fun for Williams Randall.
