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1. Challenge
How do you get 200.000 extra visitors to the Antwerp Zoo? Knowing that the Antwerp Zoo suffers severe competition from other leisure activities, that this equals a visitors increase of 18 % , that there is no real urgency for people to go to the Zoo (the animals are always there), and that bad weather can be the final reason to cancel an even already planned zoo visit (people don’t go to the zoo when it rains)?
2. Solution
KMDA (Antwerp Zoo) and Boondoggle focussed on a unique and highly emotional event : the birth of a young elephant.
A story unique for Belgium and even very rare for Europe.
A story by which we would be able to evoke the complete Zoo story (apart from being a zoo, the Antwerp Zoo is renowned for its animal research and wildlife funding projects).
A story by which we could take the whole Belgium population on a unique and long journey : the pregnancy and birth of a young baby elephant.
To do this we built a digital platform baby-elephant.be, allowing people to follow the story on a day by day basis. 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. 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 watched the birth online, there were 1.2 million site visits in the birth weekend, 5.000 people signed the online birth register, there were 22.000 blog comments in the birth weekend. And most importantly: the Antwerp Zoo welcomed 300.000 visitors (200.000 paying visitors) more than in 2008.