Hundreds of small decals with the message: “YOU BETTER BE GOOD, SANTA IS COMING” were placed on existing public signs along the proposed parade route to promote the event and highlight the actual route.

When seen in context with our message, the signs took on a double meaning: if you chose to disobey what the sign prescribed, Santa would put you on the “Naughty” list. People were faced with decisions that would result with them ending on Santa’s “NICE” or “NAUGHTY” list!!! The generic message enabled us to find dozens of contextually relevant environments that could be repeated hundreds of times, which helped ensure we would get the most out of our tiny $4,000 budget.

Graphic charts illustrating the outcome of the two opposing actions, one “NAUGHTY” and one “NICE”, where “NICE” clearly dominated, gave the impression that most people had been in favour of being on Santa’s “NICE” list.

Attendance increased by 20% year over year, a record high of 650,000+ visitors.

The campaign budget of $4,000 was leveraged and negotiated to deliver 8 times more production value and 30 times more media value.

We garnered hundreds of thousands more in free PR. The daily newspapers printed our parade route and provided links to our website, radio and TV stations provided on air mentions and the #1 TV network covered the event live, which was re-broadcast around the world.

Online, thousands of fans joined Facebook, individual blogs were created and Flickr was used to disseminate pictures of the event.