The first year we handled media buying with Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari, we used our moxie to deliver a 35% cost savings in the broadcast buys while negotiating over $1 million in added-value promotions and giveaways. We saved them so much money over their previous campaign, in fact, that we were able to pay for Holiday World’s foray into online advertising. This set the stage for planning the exciting Thunderbird introduction the following year.

Spreading the Vast Wings of Awareness

Make people aware of Thunderbird, they said. Get people to buy tickets, they said. We are up to both challenges, we said. And this is what we did.

Both our media and creative teams worked to create a plan of attack that would reach both goals.

Media—Create a plan that would reach the traditional target of women age 25-44 with school-age children who are looking for affordable fun and are already aware of Holiday World (deep breath after reading that long description), as well as a second group who might’ve never visited or were skeptical due to an old perception of the theme park.

Creative—Figure out a way to get people excited about a thrilling new ride while keeping the notion of a wholesome family brand at the forefront.

A big coaster called for a big rollout plan! For the awareness portion of the campaign, we included radio, outdoor, TV, online display and Google pre-roll. Then there was more targeted media like search engine marketing, contextual and behavioral online display, direct mail and email to drive online ticket sales and season-pass purchases.

And remember those super-powerful media-buying powers we mentioned? We put those to work to negotiate nearly 450 added-value events and promotions, worth in excess of $2.1 million!

Creating Results of Legendary Proportions

It’s no tall tale that our Thunderbird introduction was a success. Season-pass sales were 31% higher than the previous year and 8.5% higher than goal.

People clicked like crazy on those online ads, achieving a very strong sales conversion rate and a near $5 return for every dollar spent in market. Park attendance? Record-breaking.

Specifically, Holiday World enjoyed its highest single-day and highest weekend attendance on record, as well as third-highest season attendance overall.

Even more impressive when you learn it was one of the rainiest Junes ever. Supernatural powers? Maybe not. Just a great plan and engaging creative for a wildly epic ride. Glad we strapped ourselves in for the thrill of it.