Brand development for Merlin Entertainments

The Situation

Sea Life is the world’s largest aquarium brand, with 35 attractions across the world. By 2008, however, it was becoming out of touch with the needs of the audience and was starting to see a decline in visitor revenue. The basic product had always been great, but the customer experience was too ‘dry’ and scientific. It had become a race to the sharks at the end of the visit and consequently so much that is incredible about the marine world was not being experienced.

The Task

My task as the Global Brand Manager for Sea Life was to grow the business, increase its appeal amongst families, reduce the amount of promotional offers and improve spend per head.

Extensive market research identified that families want edutainment; the opportunity to learn something but have fun at the same time. Sea Life needed to stop being scientists and start being explorers!

The Action

As the architect of the new brand identity, I led workshops to define the positioning, training programs to build colleague engagement, a rebranding exercise to change the experience in the centres and updates to the customer touch points that improve the experience.

The logo was modernised, the website overhauled, new more engaging information replaced the boring science stuff, conservation programs took centre stage. All together, extra Wow! was added from the first point of contact (whether that was web, leaflet or offer voucher) to the initial impression upon arrival (exterior, queuing and welcome) and through the visit (exciting creatures, immersive displays, interesting facts and loads of interaction).

The Results

Sea Life had something meaningful to offer in the battle for share of the 21st century day out. Customer satisfaction jumped 5 points so that now more than 95% of the guests rated their day as excellent or very good. Revenue in the first year of the rebrand was up £4 million, with spend per head improved by 5%

But don’t just take my word for it:

Steve is one of the ‘clearest thinking’ most savvy brand gurus I’ve ever met…and I’ve met a lot of them. He has that uncanny knack of being able to grasp the essence of any enterprise very quickly and provide clear simple directions for making the most from it.”

Mark Oakley, Head of PR, Merlin Entertainments