Brand Campaign Case Study: Wānaka A&P Show

The Challenge
The Wānaka A&P Show is much-loved community event adjacent to the shores of Lake Wānaka that attracts about 45,000 people from all over NZ annually.

For 2019, the Show team wanted to do something a bit different that would get the community talking for a longer period of time – driving excitement and engagement via social media, increase A&P Society memberships and drive online sales. They also wanted to do a brand health check and to make sure stakeholders (members, trade exhibitors, major sponsors and the public) still loved the Wanaka Show as much as they always have done.

This campaign took a traditional local institution to lead a conversation about what it means to be a ‘local’ in a cheeky, fun and engaging way, driving widespread brand awareness across traditional media and social media while improving brand health at the same time.

Our Approach
Scope Communications helped the Wanaka A&P Show become a platform for discussion around what it means to be a ‘local’ – reinforcing a sense of community and being positioned as the authority on a feel-good community discussion.
The Show poked fun at the old-school mentality of “being a local” through a series of online videos featuring long-standing, well-known locals, who talk about what it means to be a local. Within each video, the Wanaka Show is identified as one of those activities that make you ‘more local’.

All content (online videos, social media posts and PR activity) would carry this message across in different ways, whether it was for brand awareness (Call Me Local campaign or Wanaka Show), driving traffic to the website, engagement in competitions and sharing information about new improvements, as suggested by the community during the stakeholder research phase.

The Results
Coverage (traditional and organic social media):

• 100% strike rate for all press releases and for all 10 story angles developed for specific media. Media coverage canvassed a wide range of topics and reflected key messages
• 64 online articles from 1 December 2018 to 16 March 2019. (Printed stories not included)
• 100% positive online sentiment
• 2x stories by broadcast media (Newshub and RNZ) and a Czech television crew (1 million viewers)
• 744 mentions of the Wanaka A&P Show between 1 December 2018 and 16 March 2019 on social media
• Potential reach (from online media sources): 52.1 million
• Advertising Value Equivalent: $482,000
• 11 journalists from seven media outlets in attendance at the Show

Brand health (post-campaign survey):

• 64.29% surveyed said they heard people talking about the Wanaka A&P Show and the Call Me Local campaign from a “moderate amount” to “a great deal”
• Overall opinion of the Wanaka Show and Call Me Local campaign ranged from “somewhat favourable” to “extremely favourable” (93%)
• 31% of respondents said their perception of the Wanaka Show brand had changed to “much more favourable” or “more favourable” in the past four months. (46% said it stayed the same)
• Net promoter score for recommending the Wanaka Show to friends/family is 85
• All but one respondent noticed the improvements to this year’s Show, with increased number of toilets, more coffee carts and sun block stations being the most noticed