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25%

Revenues over target

5,000+

Extra hours of surfing time booked

3x

Tripled our pre-bookings target

Possiblist moment!

Surfing has amazing benefits for health, stress and mindfulness. But getting an audience of grommets and barneys amped for year-round surf isn’t easy. Unless you’re us…

We bring our passion, smarts and heart to The Wave’s unique and spectacular mission, with an identity and message that sells the excitement of surfing on-demand without sacrificing spontaneity.

Objective

The Wave is a new inland artificial surfing lake developed on the outskirts of Bristol. Following a competitive pitch, we were appointed as lead Creative and Media partner for The Wave, working in partnership from pre-launch to the present day.

The Wave brings surfing to the wider population, fully inclusive of all ages and abilities. But bringing a broad audience of non-surfers to an unheated surf lake is a big challenge! Our ongoing objectives are:

  • Introduce surfing to people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities.
  • Achieve annual visitor numbers of 300,000, selling 194,000 ‘lagoon hours’ per year.
  • Drive online ticket sales, group bookings and walk-up tickets.

 

Solution

We began with extensive audience research to feed into our media and creative planning route. Using existing persona data as a base, we developed our own research into media consumption and brand discovery.

This showed two key audience targets spanning all abilities, from experienced surfers through to those who have never surfed: 

Experience Seekers – chasing down a life of challenge, change and novelty

Family Focussed – cramming in quality time to make those magic memories

As a destination attraction our geographical region focused on a two-hour drive time from Bristol. These insights led into our initial creative proposition and media planning for launch, but as The Wave has established itself as a must-visit experience, we are able to target advertising on a broader catchment area. 

We made our media investment work harder by overlaying our target audiences with geo data and their likelihood to travel to focus on people who we could count on to make the trip.

Our media selections focus on reaching our audience in the environments that matter to them. The vibrant creative platform extolls the benefits of surfing on health, wellbeing and the value of fun. Our tone is positive, inclusive and respectful of surfing’s global heritage, as we ask people to #findyourwave.

Results

For a one-of-a-kind prospect like The Wave, a strong launch is a must. 

Our launch campaign activity developed PPC and Paid Social campaigns in Facebook and Instagram, then extended across digital channels and offline:

Out of Home around drivetime corridors into Bristol, Bristol train stations, bus and taxi adverts, as well as train card panels on trains into and out of Bristol. We advertised in regional press and magazine titles that hit our target audience, running radio competitions & commercials on Heart regionally.

Then to bring it to life and make it real, we got into experiential marketing activations with street art and stencils across Bristol town center – with all creative assets and media placements managed by us.

And we delivered outstanding results:

  • Exceeded Early Rider target of 11,000 hours by 47%
  • Smashed our revenue target by 25%
  • Over-delivered on and post-launch surf slot bookings by 200%

Our radical work with The Wave has developed into a true partnership and a one-team working experience, based on trust, innovation, results – and a great working experience..

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At Anything is Possible, we take a different approach. Experienced in all fields of media, we’ll work in partnership with you to shape and execute strategies, campaigns and media plans that propel your brand and resonate with your audience.

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