Waddle Happen Next?
Celebrating A Decade Of Penguins & Partnership
In April 2024, we kicked off an attendance campaign for our longtime friends at the Maryland Zoo. The main goal was to boost ticket sales and memberships, but this campaign had a little something extra to celebrate: the tenth anniversary of their Penguin Coast exhibit, which just so happens to be the largest African penguin colony this side of the Atlantic. When we started brainstorming, we couldn’t ignore the buzz around reality TV shows like Love Is Blind and Love Island. (It turns out that penguins, with their big personalities, have a lot in common with reality TV stars.) Thus was born the cheeky concept: Waddle Happen Next?
Client
Industry
Capabilities
Lights. Camera. Penguins
Building on a campaign we had done for the zoo a decade ago, we refreshed the black-and-white design with vibrant gradients. Ads across digital and physical platforms captured the essence of each penguin, leaning into specific placements. At the airport, we ran ads that joked about penguins not being able to fly, and as football season approached, we had fun with local pride.
Campaign Performance
- 6.1 Million Digital Impressions
- 4 Million Traditional Impressions
- 10,133 Clicks Landing Page
- 1,100 Clicks Buy Tickets
Our marketing and analytics team used GroundTruth’s location-based targeting to track foot traffic to the Zoo. We targeted people in the Baltimore area with display ads, then placed a digital “fence” around the Zoo to measure how many of them actually visited. Since many visitors buy their tickets at the gate rather than online, this allowed us to track real-world visits and report back on the campaign’s return on investment.
