Our client, Cedar Fair Entertainment, has 11 regional amusement parks across the country. In the 2018 season, Cedar Fair parks were struggling to hit their season pass goal due to negative weather patterns across the U.S. Not to mention, the end of summer was only three weeks away – that meant the end of our key season for peak attendance as schools reopened and summer vacations ended. So, as attendance started to hit its usual decline, Cedar Fair actually needed to drive a revenue boost. Cedar Fair came to C-K to come up with an integrated idea to drive last-minute foot traffic across all parks to meet the year's overall attendance goals.
The objective: Increase total attendance across parks by .X% from 2017 in 2018*
With no incremental investment and very little time, we needed a smart and savvy PR activation to cut through the clutter, generate buzz, sell 2019 season passes and, of course, drive attendance to the parks. To do this, C-K played into National Roller Coaster Day (yes, that is an actual holiday… it's August 16) utilizing digital, traditional and social platforms to communicate new thrills and an exclusive 2019 season pass offering.
*Exact attendance growth goal is confidential and included in the confidential section for judges only.
We utilized real-time trend spotting to identify that competitors were leveraging National Roller Coaster Day to announce new rides for next season. We also saw that theme park enthusiasts were chatting about the upcoming day across social media.
Typically, Cedar Fair has shied away from this industry date due to the cluttered landscape. However, given the need for revenue boost, it became a perfect platform to launch both local events and a national promotion scalable across the parks. We strategically leveraged National Roller Coaster Day as a must-attend celebration that we made ownable across all our parks to meet our objective of increasing overall revenue.
The Celebration
A New Offering: 2019 Season Pass Discount
To capitalize on the relevancy of the holiday and drive excitement, we launched our celebratory campaign just the weekend before the National Roller Coaster Day holiday:
From concept to execution, this promotion was done within two weeks, and it exceeded expectations. We utilized an insight from our social listening to deploy it across all channels including social, traditional media and digital channels.
Objective: Increase total attendance across parks by .X% from 2017 in 2018*
Results: Attendance at the parks shattered records for the remaining three weeks the parks were open. Revenue within this time frame increased 292% compared to the same period in 2017.
*Exact attendance growth goal is confidential and included in the confidential section for judges only.
