ZB13.2

STAFF REPORT

To: Board of Management

From: Jennifer Tracey Senior Director – Marketing, Communications & Partnerships

Subject: Advertising Expenditure

Date: 2017-05-04

Summary:

This report outlines the proposed media plan and expenditures related to the 2017 advertising campaign as provided for in the 2017 Operating Budget. The paid advertising will complement the public relations, event and social media strategy to ensure we are reaching our target audiences in the Greater Area and beyond, and that we are communicating the right messages.

Recommendations:

It is recommended that the Board approve the following:

1. Expenditures to reimburse Grey for strategic planning; creative development; and any outsourced production costs related to advertising programs as required for the brand, not to exceed $200.0 thousand, plus HST; and,

2. Expenditures with Zenith Optimedia Canada Inc. for media purchases related to the 2017 advertising campaign, not to exceed $956.0 thousand, plus HST.

Financial Impact:

There are no financial implications related to approval of these recommendations as the related advertising expenditures are included in the Operating Budget for 2017.

Comments:

The Toronto Zoo set out the following objectives which link directly to the goals in the recent Strategic Plan, to drive the Marketing, Communications & Partnerships planning for 2017:

1. Meet or exceed 1.325 million visitors with a positive net revenue;

Advertising Expenditure Report 2017-05-04 2. Highlight the last summer to see the giant pandas at the Toronto Zoo before they leave in early 2018 for the Calgary Zoo.

3. Highlight the Zoo as a ‘must-see’, fun and engaging experience filled with discovery and learning for all ages while continuing to highlight the work the Toronto Zoo does to save and protect species, particularly Canadian species to coincide with Canada 150, and their habitats at home and abroad through conservation, education and research programs;

4. Engage and leverage partnerships (including city, tourism outposts and public and private);

5. Continue to build a strong year-round public relations and social media campaign to attract visitors from Toronto and beyond.

This summer, the Toronto Zoo’s advertising campaign will have a strong focus on the giant pandas and the urgency to see them as this will be the last summer they will be at the Toronto Zoo. Each year, the Toronto Zoo endeavours to maximize the advertising budget with the greatest reach to our identified target audience. In 2016, with updated and more robust information, we were able to utilize data from the visitor survey and postal code information collected from our guests, but also leverage the lower Canadian dollar by continuing to target American and International tourists and highlighting the Toronto Zoo’s success with conservation and breeding programs for endangered and vulnerable species. The attendance target for 2017 will be achieved in a number of ways including through the annual advertising campaign, consumer and visitor promotions, membership acquisitions, torontozoo.com, social media platforms, Toronto Zoo publications and collateral, media and corporate partnerships, education programs, public relations, special events and group/corporate events.

The annual paid advertising campaign will be integrated with the communications and public relations plan to support the strategic objectives and may include television, radio, out-of-home, online, print, social and digital media as well as leveraging our partners to promote and market the Toronto Zoo and continue to promote the Giant Panda Experience which continues to be the main draw.

The visitor surveys show that online sources now account for 81% of all sources of information when seeking out information about a specific attraction. Social media/online information and the Toronto Zoo’s website are the most influential tools when deciding which attraction to visit. Our survey indicated that 62% of guests visited our website and gave it a 98.8% good to excellent rating with 36% saying it had an influence on decision to visit. Based on this information we will continue to use our website and social media channels as key communication engagement tools and continue to build these communities. The Toronto Zoo launched a Twitter account in September 2015 to coincide with the announcement of Er Shun’s pregnancy and currently have over 12,000 followers and in 2016 there were more than 10.7 million impressions through Twitter. Facebook continues to grow and in 2016 there was a gain of more than 56,400 new fans reaching a new total of 133,382 friends, an increase of 67% over 2015. Instagram continues to grow in popularity with 26,700 new followers added in 2016 for a total 37,000 followers.

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Target Markets:

Marketing, Communications and Partnerships continues to work hard to find the right advertising mix that reaches our target market in Toronto and the (GTA) as 58.4% of our visitors come from this geographic area. Our mix also reaches outside of the GTA to include the growing areas of Durham and the area and extends along the 400 series of highways and into the United States.

Also, in 2016, there was an increase in US visitors (8.8% in 2016 vs 6.4% in 2015) and international visitors saw a jump to 11.5% in 2016 from 8.0% in 2015.

Target Audience:

While the Toronto Zoo’s primary target audience continues to be young families with children under the age of 12, the final year of giant pandas provides a unique opportunity to appeal to a much broader audience as it will likely be the last time guests will be able to see giant pandas in Toronto with the pandas moving to the Calgary Zoo in early 2018.

In the key family market, the parents are typically 24 – 44 years of age with children 12 years and younger (Under 12 represents 84.4% of kids visiting the Zoo). The mother continues to be the key decision maker/influence for a Zoo visit and moms are motivated to visit the Zoo primarily because it is a family outing (48.5%), followed by seeing a special exhibit (19.9%). Of those 19.9% who indicated a special event/exhibit as the main reason for a visit, 68% of them identified the giant pandas and cubs as the main draw.

Word of Mouth

Based on information from the Toronto Zoo Visitor Survey there continues to be an increasing trend of word of mouth as the most influential information source at 47.3% in 2016. In 2015, word of mouth was 40.2%, 35% in 2014, 25.6% in 2013 and only 5% in 2012. Word of mouth includes variations between verbal/email/text versus social media which includes Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and others.

Word of mouth continues to be a very important area for us as we know if we provide an excellent visitor experience this will influence our visitors to tell their friends and families to visit the Zoo. Toronto Zoo will continue to contribute to a positive visitor experience by hosting special events on site this year including Easter activities, Mother’s and Father’s Day activities, animals days, giant panda birthday parties, Halloween, holiday events as well as member only events. In 2016, we introduced a Fun Team which served as Toronto Zoo Ambassadors who enhanced the guest experience through unexpected and proactive guest engagement throughout the Zoo site.

Marketing, Communications & Partnerships – 2016

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In 2016, we focused heavily on the debut of the first giant panda cubs born in Canada and the Toronto Zoo which was a huge success for the global giant panda conservation breeding program. In addition, the Zoo also had success with other conservation breeding programs including the birth of an Indian rhino calf in February and the debut of Juno, a polar bear cub adopted by the Canadian Army, also in February. We were able to highlight these births in our summer advertising campaign called “They won’t be small forever”.

The Toronto Zoo develops a year-round public relations strategy to enable us to garner earned and social media attention during the non-peak seasons to keep the Zoo ‘top of mind’ with consumers and focus on a paid advertising campaign during the peak season of May – September to maximize visitation. In addition to the peak season campaign, the Zoo has a number of advertising assets in market with tourist publication to remain top of mind with families planning their vacations early in the year. Throughout 2016, much of the earned media strategy was focused on the conservation breeding successes of the giant panda cubs, rhino calf and polar bear cub. Through these efforts, the Zoo generated more than 2,254 media stories reaching more than 313 million people with an ad value of more than $2.8 million.

On February 8, 2016, to coincide with the Chinese New Year, we launched a Name Our Cubs promotion presented by Cathay Pacific Airways where panda lovers around the globe could vote on their favourite pair of names for Canada’s first giant panda cubs. Through a very generous in-kind opportunity, we partnered with the Canadian Outdoor Measurement Bureau (COMB) whose members provided a significant number of digital assets (billboards and transit shelter advertising) and bus advertising in major markets across Canada including Vancouver, Calgary, London, Hamilton, Burlington, Etobicoke, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal valued at more than $1 million. This campaign ran for the duration of the three week voting period and was also part of the unveiling of the winning names on March 7th when a new campaign kicked in announcing the winning names and encouraging people to visit the Zoo when the giant panda cubs made their public debut on March 12, 2016.

Media Partnerships

The Toronto Star has been the official daily newspaper of the Giant Panda Exhibit since 2013. We are confident we will continue with our media partnerships in 2017 and are grateful for the extensive support from the Toronto Star as well as CTV Toronto/Bell Media who continue to be a supporter of the Zoo. The Zoo will continue to pursue these media partnerships as well as identify additional partnerships to support our campaign and target markets.

Hotel Partnership and Consignment

The Delta Toronto East continues to be the Official Hotel of the Toronto Zoo and the Zoo works with their marketing staff to promote Zoo packages to tourists year-round as well as large groups staying at the hotel. As the largest hotel closest to the Toronto Zoo, the Delta Toronto East is very well positioned to promote a Zoo visit to their guests as a high volume of their visitors arrive by car and can easily drive to the Zoo.

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The Zoo has also moved to an online consignment ticket process to encourage more hotels in the GTA to promote Toronto Zoo ticket sales to their guests. Hotels that participate in our program receive 20% off regular price admission and we continue to see an increase in the number of hotels participating in this program.

Reaching Students and Promoting Field Trips

The Marketing, Communications & Partnerships Division continues to support the Zoo’s Education Branch with a newly designed school programs brochure, high profile placement on torontozoo.com and new materials to promote the final year of the giant panda conservation breeding program.

Membership Acquisition

Each year through the budget process, new membership acquisition targets are established. Beginning in 2014, the Toronto Zoo made the decision to initiate a discount offer through Groupon based on their extensive database that aligned with key Toronto Zoo visitor demographics. The tremendous success of this offer led the Toronto Zoo to initiate a second offer in 2016 to acquire 1,500 new members through Groupon with a discount offer in each membership category. This offer exceeded the target with 6,472 new memberships sold.

As part of the 2017 budgetary process, it was determined that the target for new membership acquisition is 1,200. Based on the strength of our brand, our current product offers, last summer of giant pandas and previous results we are confident we will be able to meet or exceed the 2017 target for new members through a Groupon offer that will be launched in early May.

We will continue to work with Membership to promote activities, events and programs to members as well as identify new opportunities to encourage repeat visits.

Public Relations and Events

Through Public Relations, the Zoo will continue to support and promote a year round calendar of events onsite and offsite that fit into the following four categories*: • Conservation – event supports a conservation program or activity (i.e. Animal Awareness Days, Cat Week, Science Rendezvous etc.) • Added value – event or activity that complements our existing offerings at no additional cost to the visitor and may increase attendance (Toronto Zoo Fun Team) • Revenue generating – Zoo events that are an additional or special ticket price on top of admission (Members’ Christmas party, Oasis Zoo Run, Move Your Paws), corporate or private events, or third-party events hosted at the Zoo (Cystic Fibrosis Walk) • Increased attendance – events hosted by the Zoo with a discounted promotion to encourage attendance (Boo at the Zoo, Seniors’ Day, Remembrance Day, Treats Walk on Boxing Day, etc.) *Some events may fall into more than one category.

Comments / Discussion:

Advertising Expenditure Report 2017 2017-05-04 Page 5 of 8 Advertising creative for 2017 will be provided by Grey Canada. For the peak season, we have tasked them to design a campaign that urges the public to visit the Toronto Zoo this summer as it will be the last summer to see the giant pandas.

With the limited advertising budget, the majority of the campaign is during the peak season, however, we are able to efficiently spread out the budget to ensure the Zoo is top-of-mind throughout the year. In addition to the main summer campaign, the following advertisements are currently in-market and started in early 2017:

• Toronto Tourism: o Hotel edition – all year o Visitor Guide edition – all year o Toronto Magazine – all year

• Mini Cards which are distributed in many GTA hotels and has proven to be a very successful tactic to reach the tourist market.

• Front page advertisements in a monthly publication called Retail Pages which is distributed free in Durham region. The Zoo has a different ad for each month of the year.

• A Toronto Zoo advertisement with a promotional discount in the Kidapalooza Coupon book. This book was distributed at Kidapalooza which was held on Family Day weekend at the Markham Fairgrounds.

• Digital ads on the very popular website called Everything4kids.com.

• Five half page ads to promote the March Break as well as the Easter long weekend in the Toronto Star

• Participating in the official City of Toronto map which is available at many spots around the city with more than 800,000 copies being printed.

• Attractions : o Summer Passport o Coupon book

• Where Magazine: o May/June – back cover

• City Flags Program throughout Toronto in key areas starting in May

• CTM Rack Card distributed to major hotels throughout the GTA as well as Tourist Information Centres on the 400 series of highways and CTM Ettractions digital ads

• CTV Connected Calendar starting on May 20th and weekly until June 3

Advertising Recall Advertising Expenditure Report 2017 2017-05-04 Page 6 of 8 Our advertising recall in 2016 was much higher at 44.3% than in 2015 at 36.5%, with 9.1% recollecting TV and newspaper (3.1%), followed by a recollection of outdoor advertising (billboards, road signs, light standards), magazines and tourist publications.

Social Media and Toronto Zoo Website:

The Toronto Zoo continues to engage our visitors and the general public through social media and the Zoo’s website. In 2016, our Facebook page exceeded 133,000 fans with the addition of 56,427 new fans – a 67% increase over 2015. Our total reach was over 84 million and our total engaged users were 4,797,125 a 132% increase over 2015. The Zoo will continue to build our Facebook community and engage them with interesting content, promotions and contests. This is a highly cost effective way to engage a large group of people and continues to be an important vehicle of positive ‘word of mouth.’

In 2016, the Zoo’s Facebook site gained 56,427 fans which was a 67% increase over 2015 bringing our Fanbase to 133,382. In addition, Twitter gained 7,493 new followers ending the year with 12,700 followers and Instagram gained 26,700 new fans, an increase of 57% over 2015 with a total now of 37,000 followers. Our YouTube channel had a total of 4,589,059 views which was a 77&5 increase over 2015 views and our total traffic to torontozoo.com increased 32% over the previous year with more than 3,099,700 visits.

The Toronto Zoo's website continues to be one of the primary sources of information for potential and interested visitors. In 2015, we saw 2.34 million visits overall, an increase of 4.2% over 2014. Our onsite visitor survey continues to show a very high satisfaction rating of our website at 98.2% of good to excellent with 61.2% of those who visited the site have used it to plan their day at the Zoo. As in past years, we will integrate our advertising campaign into our social media channels to keep our fans engaged. In 2015 we also expanded our social media presence to include Twitter and we currently have more than 6,000 followers.

CityPass:

The Zoo will be continuing to participate in CityPass which is a highly effective and efficient way to reach the tourist market as CityPass provides extensive marketing for this program. This is a time sensitive discounted ticket booklet which features six Toronto attractions and is aimed at travellers visiting Toronto. It is sold at locations around Toronto and is also available for purchase on the CityPass website as well as at the Toronto Zoo.

Giant Panda Sponsors:

FedEx:

The Toronto Zoo continues to benefit from the partnership with FedEx and the two branded giant panda trucks continue to be spotted around the GTA. FedEx also added the Giant Panda logo to each delivery package for their customers throughout the GTA and southern Ontario which continued to promote the Zoo throughout the year. This will

Advertising Expenditure Report 2017 2017-05-04 Page 7 of 8 also continue throughout 2017 and will feature the giant panda cubs. We will continue to with FedEx to identify other joint opportunities to promote the Giant Panda Experience.

Mandarin Restaurants:

Based on the success of a new initiative with our partner Mandarin Restaurants distributing Free Child coupons (with a paying adult) to their customers, will be continuing with this promotion in 2017. In addition, Mandarin Restaurants will continue to promote the Giant Panda Experience with banners in each restaurant entrance throughout Ontario.

Toronto Star:

The official daily newspaper of the Giant Panda Experience is the Toronto Star. They came onboard as a key partner in 2013 and provided extensive in-kind advertising throughout the year to support not only the giant panda exhibit but other key exhibits and events.

Toronto Zoo Channels:

The Toronto Zoo will continue to use our own channels to promote the Giant Panda Experience as well as the breeding successes we have had in the past few months. These channels include: Wild for Life magazine (formerly called Collections). In the past, this magazine was sent only to members via mail three times a year. Moving forward, this publication will become the official magazine of the Toronto Zoo and will continue to be part of the benefits to members and is also available for purchase in our retail stores and sent to our key stakeholders and partners. We will continue to use the Toronto Zoo's on-site digital monitors to promote conservation messages and successes as well as events and activities occurring onsite.

The creative budget is allocated for creative production including TV, radio, online/website, digital, out of home and print. The Toronto Zoo will also continue to utilize social media channels as a cost-effective way to reach thousands of users. While the Toronto Zoo relies heavily on the peak-season paid advertising campaign, the Toronto Zoo will continue to execute a parallel public relations and events strategy to ensure the Toronto Zoo continues to remain ‘top of mind’ as a must-see cultural institution in Toronto for all ages.

CONTACT: Jennifer Tracey Senior Director, Marketing, Communications and Partnerships 416.392.5936

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