Navy Pier Case Study: A Chicago Icon Reimagined

The challenge

Revitalizing a Chicago landmark

Navy Pier has been a Chicago icon for more than 100 years. Known as the People’s Pier, the lakefront attraction is home to thrilling rides, mouth-watering food, endless cultural programming, and epic skyline views.

But what happens when the People’s Pier no longer connects with the people? As Navy Pier invested in revitalization efforts, they also identified a perception problem that was impacting awareness—and visitation.

Envisionit came onboard to take advantage of new audience research and implement a more sophisticated approach to targeting and segmentation—not to mention some stunning new creative—to help the Pier create foundational awareness, drive visitation, and connect with tourists and locals alike.

The setup

Ready to make some waves

As the pandemic waned and travel restrictions eased, it was time for the world to take a look at the radically changed tourism landscape.

For Navy Pier, that meant reconnecting with out-of-town visitors and reintroducing themselves to a skeptical local audience.

While the Pier had been primarily focused on targeting locals during the era of limited travel, new audience insights revealed that locals viewed the Pier strictly as a tourist destination with dated experiences and chain restaurants — despite the fact that the Bubba Gumps had long ago been replaced with an array of award-winning chefs and local flavors.

To reconnect with this core group and start driving foot traffic, the Pier tapped the ENV team to create fresh messaging and reach priority audiences with a strategic approach to media.

The solution

Fresh messaging for a reinvigorated destination

One thing quickly became clear to us — today’s Navy Pier is not the one locals think they know. It’s a place where you can salsa dance to live music on the waterfront, sip craft cocktails with skyline views, or bring the kids to experience colorful cultural celebrations from around the globe.

Our creative team started with the insight that Navy Pier has something for everyone, but not everything is for everyone. The result: Our “Made for” campaign subverts locals and travelers’ expectations of the Navy Pier experience by speaking to their interests and the unexpected and iconic activities only at the Pier.

“Made for” is Navy Pier’s declaration of providing a personalized, unique experience that’s made for everyone. It’s bold and flexible, bringing fun energy and a playful POV to bust existing perceptions and reinvigorate the brand.

This flexible concept appropriately underscores the kaleidoscope of experiences available at the Pier, allowing us to deliver the right message to the right eyes.

A bold type treatment and immersive, energetic photography round out the look and feel of the campaign to create eye-catching, thumb-stopping energy—helping to bust existing perceptions and reinvigorate the Navy Pier brand.

The strategy

Getting the word out near and far

Armed with fresh creative and targeted messaging, it was time to start getting the word out.

Our media team started with a heavy push for brand awareness via traditional and digital tactics to reintroduce the Pier to its priority audience segments.

We followed this up with a campaign that supported the Pier’s heavy focus on year-round events. An interest-based approach allowed us to filter family-based programming, weeknight activities for locals, and other event types and serve them to the right people at the right time.

We leveraged audience segmentation, geo-targeting, and proximity identifiers to reach users with a unique message that matched their individual motivators. Our data-driven programmatic approach allowed us to capitalize on 1:1, contextual, and geo cohort targeting to ensure efficient targeting and message segmentation.

We strategically split investment across “awareness” campaigns and key “event-driven” campaigns based on peak visitation times.

Throughout this campaign, we leveraged a wide range of ad formats across our digital channels to connect with audiences where they are and prioritized video when possible to create an immersive glimpse into the Navy Pier experience.

By geo-fencing Navy Pier, we created lookalike audiences and enhanced visitor profiles based on real-time visitor data.

Building off the success of this program, we’ve established a foundation of learnings by channel for each audience segment and market, raising the bar for performance moving into 2024.

Traditional: TV, Radio, OOH, Print
Programmatic: Display, Interactive Video, Native, High Impact, Audio
Search: Google, YouTube
Social: Meta (Facebook/Instagram), social AR filters, YouTube
Spanish language TV, radio and social

We also placed digital OOH across Chicago in high-traffic areas and attractions such as museums, airports, and public transit, then retarged consumers exposed to billboards. Many of these placements were contextual, such as our “Made for Drama” ads placed in our bustling theater district.

The results

Driving people to the Pier

We’re so proud of our work with Navy Pier, and look forward to a strong year ahead as we continue to grow our partnership and expand to new targets and audiences. As for the measurable results, we’ll let the numbers speak for themselves.