SeaWorld’s Marisa Thalberg on its marketing approach and new campaign

Marketing veteran Marisa Thalberg worked at a host of brands, including Lowe’s and Taco Bell, before taking over marketing at SeaWorld Entertainment a year ago as chief marketing and communications officer. The company has since rebranded—its corporate name, as of last month, is United Parks & Resorts Inc.—to better incorporate sibling brands Busch Gardens, Discovery Cove, Sesame Place, Water Country USA, Adventure Island and Aquatica. And next month, the SeaWorld brand is rolling out its first new campaign under Thalberg, from creative agency Innocean, which won a pitch for the project last summer. Called “So Many Worlds to Love,” the upcoming campaign will highlight the myriad ways SeaWorld can create a lasting experience for a family. Ad Age Leading Women Luncheon Join us Aug. 7 in New York as we recognize this year’s honorees Buy your ticket today Ad Age spoke with Thalberg about the new work and what’s ahead for SeaWorld. Responses are lightly edited. You joined SeaWorld just about a year ago. How has the first year been? We rebranded the company and it’s apparent that there’s an amazing portfolio of amazing parks. In each of them, there is such an opportunity to get beyond the people who already know and love us and make sure the value proposition of what makes each brand and park special is understood—to make that storytelling better. And no park in the portfolio deserves that more than SeaWorld. It was extremely important to us to do the foundational work to understand what would be meaningful. There’s so much once you go and experience the park. We did some value proposition research and made up the methodology ourselves with our consumer insights team. We took different tracks at what makes the SeaWorld experience so worthwhile. Getting those learnings from current and prospective guests informed the brief to tell us we’re now ready to go take a fresh approach through upper funnel storytelling of answering what is SeaWorld and why is SeaWorld so special. Is this the first major campaign from your marketing leadership? We are constantly putting forth all kinds of different messaging and creative and we’ve had some interesting moments. We had the Ultimate Shark Experience [last summer]. But it’s been more the day-to-day retail storytelling of all of the different events and promotional offers—there is constant motion and communication. This is something we really thought of as a different version, it’s more of a brand campaign. It’s the first time we’ve done something completely new, that’s not a redo of something we’d been working with already, in six years. It coincides with our actual anniversary—60 years ago the gates first opened. It’s an appropriate moment in an anniversary year to establish us in a new way and reestablish what makes this experience special. The new campaign features a real family. Can you talk about why that was important and why the work is expected to resonate with visitors? SeaWorld sits in an incredibly rarified place in terms of being in the absolute upper echelon of quality defined by the AZA [Association of Zoos and Aquariums] and other organizations. This past year, we surpassed the m milestone of having rescued 40,000 injured, sick or orphaned animals. When there’s an animal needing rescuing offshore, invariably the first call is SeaWorld. The emotional connection that happens, in particular with families, but also with anyone, when you have that encounter, this might be your children’s first time coming face to face with a dolphin, a manatee or a whale. What can happen is when you see it you care differently versus something you read about in a book because it’s not conceptual anymore. Someone once told me that you might go to another theme park and have an amazing time and want to be a princess, but [at SeaWorld] you can have an amazingly thrilling fun day and your children come away wanting to be a marine biologist or a veterinarian. We didn’t want to make this [too] serious and swing the pendulum to the other extreme of being all about education and research, but this is a place of joy and a place of transformational experience. By telling the story through the eyes of one real family, you can really feel that. The other big realization from the research is there’s a lot more to the experience than people realize. Some people don’t know you can have close-up encounters. Some people don’t realize all the thrills and the coasters that we packed into the parks. Then there’s all the events. One of the things we loved about the concept that Innocean came up with, and why we chose to go with them, is that they understand the brief. There are so many worlds within SeaWorld and so many worlds to love. Where will the campaign appear and have you done any early testing? The 30-second spot will be across digital and social. It will be screening in regional market broadcast in 30-second and breakdowns. There are also opportunities to do other versions of it and continue the storytelling. We did some standard advertising copy testing and it scored at one of the highest scores I’ve ever seen, so that’s giving us hope and confidence that it will have an impact when it hits the market. What else can we expect to see this year from SeaWorld? It is an interesting moment to be introducing this because it does coincide with the official kick-off of the brand’s 60th-anniversary festivities. And how we want to celebrate that all year, you break down the name SeaWorld, it’s easy to play with both parts. We’ve used the double entendre of the word “sea” often. We decided to have a theme early on, with everything we’re doing, including the signage in the park, there’s so much more to “sea.” It is very purposeful on that play of words. There is so much more that you may think or know. We have the 60th anniversary and all sorts of good things—we’re going into lots of things happening throughout this summer including new presentation in the parks and parades. Everything is plussed up. That happens under the banner “So Much More To Sea.” Then the other part is this campaign and “world.” It all ladders up to we want you to see us with fresh eyes and understand us with a new motivation to visit. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

SeaWorld’s Marisa Thalberg on its marketing approach and new campaign

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