Chessington Ad is Just Adventurous Enough

Chessington’s Summer campaign spotlights their new attraction based on the Jumanji franchise, with glimpses of rides, restaurants, animals and a Jumanji-themed bedroom. The ad takes a straightforward approach but with an entertaining twist – it follows a family through the park, but rather than show their adventures on foot, it straps them into an invisible rollercoaster and gives them a whistle-stop special-effects tour of the attractions on offer.

Theme Parks are a tricky category to excel in. This isn’t because the brands and products on offer are difficult to sell. Quite the opposite – Theme Parks have such a built-in emotional advantage, and are so tailor-made for showing happy people having fun, that the average Test Your Ad score is a strong 4.2-Stars, and the average short-term Spike is (compared with all ads) Exceptional.

In other words, this is a category people are predisposed to like. The challenge for a Theme Park advertiser is to find a way to present the brand that lets it stand out in a popular category. In most sectors, brands can do that by going against category conventions and doing something entirely different. But with a 4.2-Star average, Theme Park ads have category conventions viewers really enjoy!

So what Chessington World Of Adventures are doing here is shrewd. They’re not breaking free of category conventions, because those conventions work – their ad is showing different elements of the park, and people having a good time there. What they’re doing is putting a dynamic twist on those conventions, by taking the best part of being at a Theme Park – the thrill of being on a ride – and applying it to a family’s entire visit. The ad is all about the feeling, as well as the features, of Chessington World Of Adventures.

And when we look at the Test Your Ad results, we can see how well this small twist and emphasis on Feeling works for the brand. The ad beats the category average on all three of our key measures, scoring a very strong 4.9-Stars, plus a higher Exceptional Spike Rating. It also picks up an Exceptional Brand Fluency score – the weakest measure for the sector as a whole, as it can be difficult for audiences to distinguish between offers. Not a problem for Chessington World Of Adventures here!

This is an ad with lessons for successful brands in popular categories. You don’t need to try and reinvent your category to stand out – by putting a new, emotional twist on the core ideas you can still deliver exceptional effectiveness.