A New Media Approach by Chester Zoo
By Wan Nur Amirah bt Wan Yahaya 2009771731 (MC22S5A)
Who would taught that a zoo needs a campaign in promoting its place since a zoo has its frequent visitors? Well, Chester Zoo did it! Chester Zoo makes use the social media in dealing with the number of the visitor as its operation has become a competitive business.
Background Located in Cheshire, England, Chester Zoo has become one of the largest zoo in United Kingdom and become a home to 7000 animals from different species. In order to compete with other zoos, Chester Zoo contracted KMP Digitata (www.kmp.co.uk) to build its own website with the domain name http://www.chesterzoo.org/.
The website allows the zoo’s employees from marketing department to conservative and keepers to update the content of the website. Besides updating the websites with the zoo’s latest news and information, the main objective of the website is to engage with the web audience thus performing an interactive communication approach with its visitors and potential visitors.
Besides that, the website applies a photo-sharing slot that is also linked with Flickr. According to Daring (2010), within just one year, over 2,000 images were uploaded in the website and almost 32,000 items in Flickr were tagged with ‘Chester Zoo’ which the traffic to the site has been overwhelming increased. KMP and Chester Zoo have basically taken the advantage of photo-sharing phenomena effectively that eventually leads to brand awareness through the photo-sharing publicity. Chesterzoo.org watermark is being placed on the upload pictures posted in Flickr group that helps to publicize the zoo worldwide (Daring, 2010).
EVALUATION
By becoming part of social media, Chester Zoo is able to reach mass audience effectively since majority of people nowadays are using the internet as the medium of communication. Through linking iFlickr, a photo-sharing website where anyone can upload and tag photos, browse other photos and add comments and annotations (Educause, 2008) to Chester Zoo website, visitors could share their experience in the zoo by uploading the or simply share their experience while in the zoo. Therefore, it can be concluded that social media able to create a greater impact when it comes to publicising a product or services.
References:
Daring, Bill (2010). Public Relations Cases: International Perspective. Case Study on Take A Look At My Giraffe: Promoting Chester Zoo. 2nd Edition. Routledge: Taylow & Francis Group. Madison Avenue, New York.
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7034.pdf. Accessed on 7 March 2012.
I think Malaysia's zoo should practice social media like what Chester Zoo have been done in promoting and publicize their zoo to the visitors and the potential ones. Using new media is cheaper and time consuming.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. We're living in technology and social media, hence it helps to promote our zoo publicly either locally or internationally. Who knows one day, our zoo can penetrate to international? May be it could increase our economic sector. Just saying :)
ReplyDeleteKak Eni, I assumed you're trying to say, time saving? ;)
ReplyDeleteTourists only come to know about Zoo in Malaysia when they have already landed here. We definitely shall use new media since our animals deserve attention from the publics as well! ;D
Indeed Naqiah. New media is vital to be practice nowadays. What Chester Zoo did is something that can be follow by our local zoo in Malaysia to attract the publics. After all, people do go online everyday:)
ReplyDelete