Urban Americans are visiting America’s national parks less than almost ever before. We wanted to bring this audience back to the parks. Since entry to all parks would be free on April 20th, the objective was to use this date as the perfect time to grab their attention and inspire them to visit.

Modern life can be hell. Thankfully, on April 20th, America’s national parks are free to enter. In a series of films, we showcased some of the highly-relatable everyday frustrations we face in the modern world, and then offer the parks’ fee free day as the perfect respite from these frustrations.

The national parks consistently monitor their visitor demographics and numbers. Through this data, we knew that visits to the parks by urban Americans was declining. We needed to target these people and bring them back to the parks. Research also showed us that we are living in the most frustrated and depressed eras in history – we’ve even been labeled Generation Frustration. The approach was to frame the parks as a perfect respite from these daily frustrations, thus giving the national parks a place in our lives.

We created a series of films, each showing one of the many little frustrations our target face in their modern lives. Each film then offers America’s national parks and the fee free day at the parks, as the perfect respite from these daily frustrations. The films launched on the 5th of April, 15 days before the fee free day and ran until the fee free day on the 20th. They were placed nationally, on social channels where our target is: Instagram, Twitter and Youtube. They were targeted specifically and directly at urban people – the exact people who are not visiting the parks, but encounter these kinds of daily frustrations.

Thanks to their shareability, the films got 600% more views than what would be expected on our small media budget. A total of 7.26 million people within our target audience saw the campaign. Ultimately, this helped the 20th of April become one of the most visited single days in national parks history. And although final data on visitor demographics is not yet available, initial reports show that people in our target group visited the parks in far higher numbers than forecast.