Let Your Senses Run Wild

2013 saw Australia’s largest and most celebrated cultural event, The Royal Easter Show, fall outside the Easter school holidays. Given the shows 100 year history and positioning as a school holiday family experience, this timing would challenge attendance and ticket sales. We knew we needed to engage beyond the traditional audience to reach our goal of selling 800,000 tickets for the 2 week event. 

Our strategy was based on the key insight; The Easter Show is bursting with sensory experiences. Regardless of demographic, there is something at the show for everyone. We created 5 unique characters, each which embodied one of the five senses and which would go on to showcase the show’s myriad of attractions via the senses they evoke. The Senses characters became the driving force for all content in an integrated, multi-channelled marketing campaign.  

All campaign elements worked seamlessly together resulting in a massive success. The show saw record crowds with 860,000 tickets sold. That’s 60,000 tickets above our goal! The Senses characters were highly engaging, with a 36% improvement on banner click-through-rates than last year and fantastic results from the Facebook app which saw an impressive number of returning users, a total of 30,000 entries in 3 weeks.