Case Study
How Magnitude of Change and Clearwater Marine Aquarium partnered to increase ticket sales by changing mindsets about animals in captivity, and reaching new audiences.
Client Background
Founded in 1972, Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA) is a leading 501 non-profit organization in Clearwater, Florida that is dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of sick and injured marine animals, public education, conservation, and research.
Client Challenge
Clearwater Marine Aquarium needed to identify how to reposition its legacy and image in order to attract new visitors to the aquarium. To do so, they would have to change parents and educators skepticism and perception around aquarium practices.
CMA needed to present a friendly, nurturing, welcoming brand image across all devices to highlight their family-friendly experiences, and conservation and rehabilitation efforts, to drive ticket sales.
Campaign Overview
Channel Explanations
- Performance Display mitigates wasted ad spend common with traditional advertising tactics due to human lag-time and error. It utilizes millions of data points in real time to reach someone at the right time and place across devices such as a desktop, phone, or tablet.
- Social Mirroring is a combination of Social Display and Social Video. Social Display advertising is the distribution of social media posts outside the walled gardens of social media platforms, often using existing media buying infrastructure. This includes social posts for FB, IG, TikTok, etc and creates the look and feel of the social environment across the open web. Typical click and engagement performance is 3x greater than traditional display.
- Social Video ads run just like in-banner video, but utilizing content from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest. Social Video ads expand social content across the open web, combatting ad fatigue and driving an average of 3x clicks and engagement.
Parents with Children, Educators
Solution
Understanding how to drive attendance for an aquarium goes beyond simply generating revenue: It entails thorough comprehension of the drives and motivators to influence people to care for marine life.
Magnitude of Change implemented a cross-device performance display digital media campaign through its proprietary programmatic platform, ORION, to reinvigorate the Clearwater Marine Aquarium brand and shift perception around aquariums. They positioned the aquarium in front of parents and educators across a 25-mile radius surrounding the aquarium to influence meaningful behavioral change in locals and tourists alike to revitalize interest.
Insights
Through testing, MoC discovered key insights on how the campaign was received:
- Creative including Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s rescued dolphins scored 2x engagement in comparison to other marine life. Rescued dolphins were a hit amongst parents and educators, driving significant ticket sales.
- Creative tailored for specific audiences, e.g. parents, achieved higher-quality audience engagement in terms of Click Through Rate and Video Completion Rate, demonstrating the value of campaigns and content created for specific audience segments. “Make some deep new friendships” and the use of language such as “adorable” scored high with parents looking for family-friendly experiences.
- Contextual targeting, which is delivering targeted ads to users based on the context or content of the web page they are currently viewing, was critical in framing Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s online presence to increase brand reputation and trust of their ethical practices and conservation efforts amongst parents and educators.
- Social Display ads with “inspiring connections,” featuring children in front of a dolphin, garnered a 1.71% CTR. These display ads did especially well with educators looking to bring classes to engaging educational experiences.
Results
Shifting perception surrounding enclosed animals is not an easy task. It requires a nuanced understanding of human psychology and behavioral determinants to influence behavior change, rather highlighting the immense educational and ecological value of the aquarium’s practices.
Magnitude of Change demonstrated the execution of a media plan that helped establish Clearwater Marine Aquarium as a safe haven for rescued marine life, driving ticket sales amongst parents and educators that far surpassed the clients’ benchmark of a 2:1 ROAS.
4:1
Other case studies you might like
Behavioral Health System Baltimore
United States Drug Enforcement Administration
