Creative Project:
Marketing the City of Oshawa’s Summer Camps and Programs
The primary goal of this project was to market and advertise the City of Oshawa’s Summer Camps and programs to ensure high enrollment and community engagement. As the Marketing and Communications Coordinator for the City of Oshawa’s Recreation Services branch, I was responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive communications plan. My role included audience analysis, content creation, and strategic execution of the marketing campaign across multiple platforms.
Strategic Approach
1.
Audience
The target audience was identified by focusing on the programs being marketed: Summer Camps for children aged 4-16 and a free summer program for children aged 2-12. This indicated that the primary target audience for this project should be households in the Durham Region with children aged 2-16.
2.
Data
Analyzed demographic data of previous registrants to gain insights into their preferences and needs for engaging with communications and marketing materials. This analysis covered factors such as age groups, gender, and geographic location. Additionally, data on website traffic revealed that users had to navigate through multiple pages to access summer program information, highlighting the need for more streamlined access.
3.
Scan
Observed the marketing strategies of neighboring municipalities like Clarington, Whitby, and Pickering to identify best practices for promoting summer programs in the area.
Creative Approach
A colour palette was developed for this project, selecting vibrant and playful colours that reflected the programs being promoted.
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Products Created
Dedicated Summer Programs Landing Page: I created a centralized landing page on the City of Oshawa’s website, making all summer program information easily accessible. This was crucial in addressing the difficulty users faced in finding relevant information.
Social Media: Designed and executed a social media campaign, including the creation of engaging social copy, graphics, and short video reels for the City’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. The video content was particularly geared towards Instagram, capitalizing on the platform’s shift towards video content.
Digital Ads: Implemented targeted ads across Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google platforms (Google Play, Youtube, Search, Gmail). This extended the campaign’s reach beyond the City’s direct channels and drove traffic to the summer camps & programs webpage.
activeOshawa Guide: Developed the activeOshawa Guide, featuring all available summer camps and programs. This was distributed both online and in print, ensuring broad accessibility.
Accessibility and Inclusion
Integrated diversity and inclusion in this project by featuring diverse faces in promotional materials and ensuring all digital content included alt text for images.
Ensured the activeOshawa Spring Summer Guide was fully accessible, meeting Adobe Acrobat DC’s “Full Accessibility Check” standards, including correct reading order, logical structure, alternative text tags, and bookmarks.
Outcomes
Website Traffic: The Summer Camps webpage experienced a 93% increase in page views compared to the previous year, with 22% of traffic coming from internal referrals, thanks to the new landing page.
Guide Engagement: The Spring/Summer Guide saw over 5,000 physical copies picked up in facilities, with the online version receiving 93,886 reads in just the summer program section.
Digital Ad Performance: The Google ads achieved 85,611 impressions with 40% of website traffic coming from Google.
Enrollment Success: Achieved a 94% fill rate for summer programs, a 16% increase from the previous year, resulting in a revenue increase of over $133,000 and generating $65 in revenue for every $1 spent on advertising.
Lessons Learned
1.
Collaboration and Partnership Building
Learned the value of cross-team collaboration, which allowed for the integration of successful strategies from other divisions into the recreation branch’s communications plan.
2.
Value of Research and Analytics
The project underscored the importance of research and analytics in understanding and engaging the target audience. Moving forward, I will continue to prioritize data-driven decisions and audience analysis to refine future marketing campaigns.
Digital Portfolio 