Aspro Parks, based in Madrid, operate 68 waterparks, amusement parks, aquariums, and zoos across 10 European countries - each independently managed and branded, allowing them to promote their unique offerings whilst maintaining shared values as part of the Aspro brand family.
Aspro Parks, based in Madrid, operate 68 waterparks, amusement parks, aquariums, and zoos across 10 European countries - each independently managed and branded, allowing them to promote their unique offerings whilst maintaining shared values as part of the Aspro brand family.
Radiator was chosen as Aspro’s digital partner to build a suite of sites for their 9 much-loved UK attractions - optimised for end-user engagement and inspiration to drive ticket-sales and on-site experiences. The sites had to be centrally managed on the WordPress CMS platform, for easy and streamlined management whilst integrating seamlessly with Vennersys; their chosen 3rd party ticketing, EPoS and visitor management platform.
But before writing a single line of code, we were entrusted to develop a brand strategy and fresh visual identity for Aspro’s flagship attraction in the UK: Chester's Blue Planet Aquarium.
Through our Brand Heart & Messaging workshops we learned that BPA offers fun, engagement and learning in safe and environmentally friendly parks. The BPA team is passionate about the animals in their care and believe in what they offer; helping to generate an emotional connection between their visitors and the natural world.
Our branding captures these values, opening up visual identity development opportunities across online/offline touchpoints - while remaining clean, accessible and clearly signposting key journey actions. BPA’s species-ethics research influenced our brand discovery resulting in the creation of a species-agnostic brand identity; future-proofed as their species collection evolves.
Strong brand identities comprise logos that work on their own and across any touch-point: offline or online.
Relying on the time-honored, trusty notebook to get the branding concept variations down.
Brands needs to connect with audiences in deep & meaningful ways to build authenticity, loyalty & trust. Using psychology methods, we explore a set of common personality traits that best identify with your brand; resonating with targets & defining your brand archetype.
Exploring organic, circular brand motifs by referencing other brands through collaborative & inspiring mood-boards.
The WordPress CMS feeds all 9 sites, each with a custom, on-brand theme and with bespoke, mix-and-match content modules – offering a flexible and custom approach for each attraction.
Our initial research revealed that that 50% of their customers interact via tablets/smartphones, leading to a mobile-first approach. This starts with hybrid wireframes which focuses on function over form and establishes clear user flows across ticket purchasing, checkout journeys, and group/party bookings. This also helps prioritise key user actions – such as showing live opening times, getting to the aquarium, introducing upsells and Shark Dives – a USP and key revenue generator for the aquarium.
Aspro's ticketing and CRM platform of choice, Venersys, was tightly woven into our build through a first-of-its-kind Wordpress integration; supporting dynamic ticketing/booking/membership and intelligently forking data securely across all 9 sites.
Engagement across the site and socials has been boosted by more than 30% since launch.
Highlighting the range of species & conservation, the animals and exhibits are structured to educate the user around the animal’s natural habitat, as well as where to find them in the aquarium itself. Exhibits are ordered to reflect the water cycle – moving downstream from mountains to shore to open ocean, with landing pages including digestible, at-a-glance educational detail, while punchy 'Did you know?' snippets pepper the other areas of the site with fun species facts.
Cascading across the suite of sites, the custom WordPress theme is purposefully sympathetic to attraction-specific reskins as needed, such as for Scotland's famous Deep Sea World, and Oakwood, Wales' biggest theme park.
A central source-of-truth codebase controls the underlying layouts and behaviour for all sites, allowing fixes and enhancements to be quickly rolled-out across all attractions consistently.
Our relationship with Radiator began with an overhaul of our suite of websites across 9 sites and 5 brands. We were immediately impressed with the care and attention the team took to understand what makes us tick, our culture and aspirations.
It was therefore a simple decision to extend our partnership into branding for Blue Planet Aquarium – our flagship brand in the UK. The Discovery phase was clearly defined, and our large team of contributors was very well marshalled through to the brand strategy conclusion.
The result is a brand identity that defines what we stand for and that emits the key messages of fun, inspiration and awareness – especially vital in today’s world.
I can’t praise Team Radiator enough and we are excited about the next stage in our digital journey.
Sue Elaiho MBA FCCA, Director Aspro UK, April 2022