Stay connected in social: Creative content strategy for Ocean Park under the pandemic

The global scale and uncertainties stemmed from the pandemic have a significant impact on almost every business. However, Ocean Park has made the most out of its social media platforms to communicate with audiences during its closure from January to September 2020.

Partnering with their long term digital agency MUSE, Ocean Park launched a social media campaign “Getting closer in social during park closed” that reached over 19 million audiences digitally. The team created a variety of content that caught audiences' eyes and proudly received the Best Use of Social Media - Gold Award at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's MARKies Awards 2021.

“The biggest challenge for Ocean Park since the outbreak of COVID-19 is the tremendous drop of tourists and visitors,” said Rose Yeung, marketing director of Ocean Park.

“Social media platforms have become the only way for us to connect with our fans and the public. It was great to see our fans enjoy the interactive and fun content we created for the park!” she added.

The new content strategy focuses on the theme "Stay connected, stay closer".

“We aim at strengthening our connection with audiences, and enhance engagement with them in the virtual world,” said Catherine Wong, business director of MUSE.

“We also advocate continuing the park’s mission in promoting education and conservation on social. With these in mind, we came up with new content pillars like Animals and Nature, Stay Connected with Audience during COVID and Virtual Park Experience. All of these contain a large variety of engaging and light-hearted content,” Wong added. 

Animals and Nature
To keep bonds between fans and the lovely animals amid social distancing, the team established a new YouTube channel, "Redd’s Nature Play Party". The channel contains fun, entertaining and educational videos about animals and nature for parents and kids to learn from home. On top of that, a wide range of content related to animals’ daily lives was created and posted on Facebook and Instagram. Even though the park is closed, animal lovers can still know what's going on with their favourite animals. They can also witness the heart-warming connections between animals and their caretakers via Facebook Live.

Stay Connected with Audience during COVID
While people cannot visit the park, the brand still wants to deliver the message of "we are all in this, fighting together". This content pillar includes various short videos that highlight hygiene measures implemented in the park and positive messages to cheer people up. This type of content helps improve brand sentiment and association, which are necessary amid difficulties. 

Virtual Park Experience
This section contains visually-oriented content, ranging from unique virtual rides to beautiful scenery to evoke people’s warm and fun memories of Ocean Park.

The thoughtfully planned and executed campaign has achieved great success on social media. Over 142,400 digital engagements were received throughout the campaign period. “Making the content relevant to the market is the key to success. We are absolutely thrilled to see the social media campaign receive a rapturous welcome from the public,” commented Yardley Luk, associate digital and social media director of MUSE.

This article is sponsored by MUSE.