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1. The Challenge
How do you get 200,000 extra visitors to Antwerp Zoo? The attraction faces severe competition from other leisure activities. What's more, 200,000 people equals a visitor increase of 18%, there is no real urgency for people to go to the Zoo (the animals are always there), and bad weather can be the final reason to cancel an already planned visit (people don't go to the zoo when it rains)? So how do you do it?
2. The Solution
KMDA (Antwerp Zoo) and Boondoggle focussed on a unique and highly emotional event: the birth of a young elephant.
A story that is unique in Belgium and even very rare for Europe. A story through which we would be able to evoke the full Zoo story (in addition to being a zoo, the Antwerp Zoo is renowned for its animal research and wildlife funding projects). A story with which we could take the whole Belgian population on a unique and long journey: the pregnancy and birth of a baby elephant.
To do this we built a digital platform, baby-olifant.be / bebe-elephant.be, that enabled people to follow the story day by day. They could do this by reading the baby elephant blog, by seeing regular ultrasounds, by consuming engaging user generated content, by registering to receive regular updates about the baby and the mother elephant's condition. Gradually, KMDA (Antwerp Zoo) and Boondoggle made them ready for the climax: the live broadcast of the birth, something that had never been done before and that would write digital history.
3. The Results
The results were staggering: 8,500 name suggestions for the new baby elephant, 41,000 registrations for updates, 850,000 unique visitors on baby-elephant.be, massive local and international press attention, 560,000 people watching the birth online. In the birth weekend, there were also 1.2 million site visits and 22,000 blog comments. In that same weekend, 5,000 people signed the online birth register. And most importantly: Antwerp Zoo welcomed 300,000 people (200,000 paying visitors) more than in 2008.