The following are a collection of pieces created for The San Francisco Zoo over a 12+ year period. From branding to events. Promotions, content, collateral and design, each helped the zoo establish a bigger voice and more cohesive look and feel. The work led to improved attendance and received millions of dollars in earned media.
On Christmas Day, The San Francisco Zoo suffered a horrible accident. Three visitors were attacked by a tiger. The news sent shockwaves throughout the world. Attendance plummeted and there were serious concerns the zoo would ever re-open. The zoo took serious steps to ensure an accident like this would never happen again but the public stayed away. They needed some convincing the zoo was safe to visit. Out of this an integrated marketing campaign called “Critter Quest” was born. Working in online, ooh, print and as an event at the zoo, it got people to reconnect with the zoo and start coming back.
The effort started with outdoor postings. People were instructed to stand in front, take a picture and then upload it to an online gallery. Thousands of photos were submitted.
The zoo has an insect museum few visitors knew about. So we created a novel way to get the public to see what they were missing by filling bus shelters with mini exhibits. They ran for several months and none of them were vandalized. Amazing, right?
The zoo has a program that allows visitors to meet various animals. So we used outdoor to promote it turning ordinary objects into inspiring representations of the animals visitors could see. The giraffe poles appeared all over the city and some are still standing today over ten years later.
