San Francisco Zoo & Gardens

CLIENT:

San Francisco Zoo & Gardens

PROJECT:

Radio

CHALLENGE:

The nearly 100-year-old Zoo had no existing creative brand standards, style guide, or creative assets aside from the Zoo logo. Nor did they have any existing messaging or marketing strategy. My task was to drive attendance for the third annual Sunset Fridays, an eight-week summer concert series at the San Francisco Zoo & Gardens.

A big obstacle to driving attendance was the weather. Unlike the rest of the United States, summers are famously foggy, windy, and chilly in San Francisco. The San Francisco Zoo is across the street from the beach making it one of the coldest, windiest places in the city. examples of positive conservation efforts.

Finally, the pre-existing media buy was limited, as was the production budget. The bigger issue was the media buy itself because it wasn’t based on current, unbiased consumer market research. I led Creative Strategy, Creative Direction, Copywriting and Editing. I also served as the Project Lead/Project Manager, Co-Producer, and Media Advisor.

Solution:

To level up production value, I successfully avoided using the radio station in-house production team. Instead, I recommended, hired, and closely collaborated with a local production company. Unlike the Zoo’s prior radio campaigns, we replaced generic royalty free music with free music from the participating bands. We recorded the animal sounds live at the Zoo to represent the animals attendees would have access to during the shows. We hired a professional voice talent to replace their previous one who wasn’t a pro.

We also introduced unique URL’s for each radio station and streaming platform to drive better understanding of where the traffic was coming from. Previously there were no analytics, metrics, or tracking methodology.

RESULTS:

A fresh, fun, and memorable branded broadcast campaign that didn’t sound like everything else on air. Introducing unique URL trackers helped us understand which stations performed best.

The bottom line is well-executed brand campaigns must be supported with unbiased data derived from a well-researched media strategy and plan. The result? Overall attendance was flat over the previous year. Fortunately, I was successful in persuading the Zoo to cancel the remainder of its radio media spend, saving 25% of the entire 2024-2025 media budget, preventing further waste.