There’s a whole lot of fowl play in the Toronto Zoo’s latest campaign for its new Endangered African Penguins exhibit.
Developed by Lowe Roche in partnership with Head Gear Animation, the new TV, print and online campaign uses claymation-style penguins to humorously highlight some of the aquatic creatures’ characteristics.
The spots are particularly hard working since they were designed to be both entertaining and informational, while simultaneously appealing to both adults and children, said Mark Biernacki, vice-president, creative director at Lowe Roche.
“It’s kind of the way you go to a Pixar movie and the kids love it, but there’s some humour for the adults as well,” he said. “[The Toronto Zoo] is a family destination, so we needed to be able to talk to both kids and adults.”
One of three 30-second TV spots, “Rock Paper Scissors,” features a stalemate in its namesake game because the participants’ flippers mean they are unable to deploy anything other than paper.
Another spot, “Pink Eye,” features a penguin fretting about pink eye without realizing that it’s a condition endemic to his species.
Each spot ends with the tag “The endangered African penguins. A dozen new reasons to visit.”
The campaign also needs to stand out amid a glut of advertising for other family-friendly tourist attractions around Toronto such as Canada’s Wonderland and Ontario Place, said Biernacki. “The challenge here is to get to the top of that list for every family that says ‘What are we going to do this weekend?’” he said.
The campaign also features a dedicated microsite, SayItWithPenguins.com, which invites users to type in a 24-character message that will be displayed by the penguins using their black and white colour scheme (purely for research purposes, Marketing discovered that attempting to use unsavoury language earns the rebuke “that is not penguin appropriate”). Users can save the message and share it via e-mail and/or social networks.
The site also links to a series of “Penguin Games,” such as word search and word scrambles, as well as a downloadable “Penguin Font.”
Print ads appearing in Toronto newspapers including the Toronto Star feature the animated penguins spelling out headlines such as “Let’s Party” and “We Waddle.” Media for the campaign, which runs until early fall, was handled by ZenithOptimedia Canada.
