Acadia National Park
Creating a Promotional Strategy for Acadia National Park
January 2018 - April 2018
For my Promotional Strategy class, we were asked to create a promotional strategy for Acadia National Park. This includes researching the park and its strength, and weaknesses, creating a marketing strategy for all channels and providing exhibits on how our team would execute it.
For the detailed project, please visit: Acadia.
Problems
As one of the most visited national parks in the U.S. (3 million visitors as of 2018), Acadia National Park is located in Bar Harbor, Maine, a perfect place for New Englander families to visit while on their summer vacation. However, the problem resides in the fact that the aforementioned demographic is the main demographic that visits the park. Our team wants to attract younger people, especially those that are not from New England to experience the beauty of New England's nature
Chosen Strategy
New Slogan
With the target audience being the younger demographic, specifically 25-40 years old, our team noticed through our research that this demographic tends to avoid going to places like national parks because they do not have time due to them being at the peak of their careers. Thus, our team decided to use that fact to create a slogan that was the center of our entire promotional strategy: “Experience the Serenity of Nature”. Our team wants to encourage people to take a break from their busy and overwhelming life and visit Acadia National Park where they can experience the serenity of New England nature
Advertising
Through research, our team found that the majority of our target demographic tends to listen to the radio while driving to work and to use streaming services to watch movies and tv shows. Thus, our team created a radio ad and a video advertisement. During the project, I happened to go to Bar Harbor for Spring Break so all of the footage in the video ad were filmed at Acadia National park
What I Learned
Technical Knowledge
This project was one of the most demanding but also the most interesting Marketing projects I have ever done. I learned how to create a promotional strategy plan, complete with social media calendar, press releases, video and radio ads, plans for each marketing channel, and advertisement designs.
For more details on the project, please visit: Acadia.
Sales Promotion
As a form of Institutional Marketing that supports higher education, students in a college or university may present their student ID upon purchasing a pass to Acadia to obtain a 75% discount on their visitation fee. High School students may also present their school IDs for a 50% discount. Promoting the use of student IDs for discounted park passes should appeal to our target market given the fact that all students possess this form of identification, and they should be rewarded with discounts for choosing to pursue their education. Although a percentage of students may not be aware of Acadia initially, learning about this benefit should provoke interest in the park and a desire to utilize this opportunity while it lasts.
Digital Marketing
To achieve our original objective of increasing visitors among the millennial age group, we must be able to convince millennials to come to Acadia National Park. Our team wanted to change Acadia National Park’s brand image to a place where people can go to thoroughly enjoy nature and be able to embrace “the serenity of nature”. Mako Marketing plans to use digital media to document and promote the serenity brand using pictures of the beautiful and unrivaled landscape of Acadia National Park, videos and pictures of the wide variety of activities the park offers, and an overall increase in digital media traffic and use Digital media is vital to the success of reaching millennials
Overview
In this project, I was in charge of designing advertising content for the client, which includes radio and video ads, social media posts, social media calendars, sales promotions, and most importantly, the slogan. On top of that, I also created the press releases and research for possible media contacts and guest speakers for our promotional strategy