Loop 033 printable

Volume 2, No. 9. May 24, 2002

Gorilla their dreams
Horses, at least for a time, are no longer king in Kentucky. The animal of choice in this international race capital are gorillas, judging from the hoopla surrounding the opening of Louisville Zoo’s $15 million Gorilla Forest exhibit. The public may not be fully aware of the creative envelopes the exhibit stretches (see the New Arrival above), giving Louisville yet another industry benchmark exhibit, but they do know it houses gorillas, and the emotional response to that has outflanked even the zoo’s marketing department.

“We had talked about doing ambassador programs or something like that,” said Maureen Horrigan, director of marketing. “Then it started generating traffic by itself. People started coming to us.” The result is Gorilla Fest running through this weekend, an event so big the Monkees pop group agreed to launch their world tour with a concert at the zoo Saturday night.

Horrigan and Diana DeVaughn, media/special promotions coordinator, planted the seed that grew into a statewide infatuation with silverback Frank and his family. It started two years ago with Louie, a 25-foot (8-meter) inflatable gorilla, making appearances around the state. The advertising hit full stride early this month with a float in the Kentucky Derby Festival's Pegasus Parade—the first time in six years the zoo joined the parade—gorilla banners hanging on City Hall and downtown lampposts, and wrap advertisements on two city buses. “If you parked one in front of a forest, you wouldn’t see the bus,” Horrigan said. The two mass transit jungles will be driving around Louisville for six months.

Meanwhile, the community became increasingly involved in the Gorilla Forest promotions, with a portion of all proceeds going toward the endowment to pay for and operate the exhibit. Two Kroger supermarkets built what they hope will be the largest banana displays in the world, unveiled yesterday with Miss Chiquita herself. Saturday the chain plans to give away 6,000 bananas as people leave the zoo. In August the Kentucky Restaurant Association will sponsor a “Go Bananas Over Gorillas” campaign focusing on sales of banana drinks and deserts. Papa Johns pizza is placing gorillas on its box tops and sponsoring television commercials, Dairy Queen is sponsoring a breakfast with gorillas, and a local chef created a Gorilla Forest cake—which Horrigan described as a “banana bread, coffee cake type thing; really good”—to be sold through Kroger stores. The zoo also has Coca Cola machines with gorilla fronts, the first gorilla coke vending front in the world, Horrigan said. “It took 1 1/2 years to get that set up,” she said.

The zoo gave a branding sheet to anybody planning to do promotions, detailing was the zoo considered acceptable and unacceptable in regards to depictions of gorillas. “You can’t dress up like a gorilla or make them look silly," Horrigan said. "We have been stressing respectful, awesome.”

The zoo’s biggest Gorilla Forest coup has been with schools. The Louisville Zoo has never before made strong inroads into Kentucky’s schools. For Gorilla Forest, the zoo published a “Kids & Conservation” workbook and sent them to 310,000 elementary students throughout the state. The 16-page booklet offers information and exercises in gorilla habitats. It introduced students to the eight-member family of gorillas taking up residence at Gorilla Forest, led by Frank the silverback. The workbook also included as a sidebar on the need to raise money for both the Gorilla Forest exhibit and conservation. In just three months, more than 270 schools have responded and raised more than $35,000.

“Schools we didn’t know were in the program are bringing us money,” Horrigan said. Students are doing poetry contests, essay contest, poster contests, challenges and donating their allowances.“It’s the only animal that has generated that kind of devotion by the kids,” she said. Notably, the kids are also driving the knowledge for parents, she said, and that gives cause to rethink the way zoos in general link their educational and entertainment missions. “Zoos usually say, ‘Lets entertain them, and when they come we educated them about the animals,’” Horrigan said. “We’re doing it the other way around. And it’s working.”

How well is it working? During the members' preview on Sunday as an endless line of patrons passed through the exhibit, DeVaughn stood by listening to the comments. “Just listening to the people today, everybody knows Frank.”