Background
Ever since Keiko, the famous killer whale from "Free Willy," left, The Oregon Coast Aquarium has pursued different ways of attracting visitors. The aquarium, which opened in 1992, covers about 37 acres just off Highway 101 on the south side of Yaquina Bay across from the city of Newport. The aquarium has a variety of indoor and outdoor exhibits.
On Memorial Day weekend, a new exhibit called "Oddwater" opened. It features unusual creatures of the sea and will run through the end of summer.
The exhibit includes sea horses, a species in which the male essentially gets pregnant; female parrotfish, which can swap genders if there are not enough males around; anglerfish, which can create light through chemical bioluminescence... balloonfish, which take air or water into their stomachs when they are threatened to inflate their bodies to several times their normal size; and other oddities.
Here's a link to the aquarium Web site that provides more information about this exhibit. The Oddwater Exhibit
The aquarium is counting on the new exhibit to draw more visitors this summer, particularly from the region. Some market research has shown that a high percentage of people in the region already have visited the aquarium but that the average length of time between visits is more than two years. The board feels that the aquarium's future success will depend on how well it can encourage infrequent visitors to come more often. The primary target, then, is people within a day's drive of Newport.
You need to create an ad that will appear on billboards on major highways within 250 miles of the aquarium encouraging people to see the new exhibit. The board wants to encourage people from the region to visit the aquarium often.
We will be looking to see how well your message makes that point. Remember, it's going to be on a billboard--something that has to be read quickly and understood immediately. The maximum length of the message is 15 words. If you use as many as 15, you'll need to divide the message into two parts--one much larger, like a headline, and one or two smaller lines. The bigger type is more important. That will capture the most attention.
You also need to decide on a visual element--perhaps photos or some other type of illustration to help make the point. What you need to turn in: