Chicago Park District Marketing Campaign: Urban Parklands of the Southeast Side

Our agency was challenged by the Chicago Park District (CPD) to provide a “Big Idea” marketing and brand positioning campaign to unify a large swath of land CPD had re-acquired after being leased for many years by commercial entities and large steel manufacturing plants. Upon acquisition, the land mass was sub-divided to nine CPD parks and a series of checkerboard open spaces.

The big idea presented to the Chicago Park District: Position the expansive area as a quasi-US National Park brand. The new area was named: THE URBAN PARKLANDS OF THE SOUTHEAST SIDE which consisted of the nine parks and broad landmass. The overarching goal of the area: provide visitors a national park outdoors experience all within local Chicago’s urban boundaries.

To realize the potential of the URBAN PARKLANDS, Gameplan Creative developed THE POWER OF THE PATCH concept utilizing the popularity of our US National Park System collectible patches to generates awareness and establish a collector’s mentality for the new URBAN PARKLANDS brand and its’ patch program.

Gameplan Creative extended the patch idea to the nine Chicago Park District locations using the similar graphic look giving each park its own identity but using colors and an art style throughout owned CPD media including: URBAN PARKLANDS signage, assorted merchandise, apps to highlight key highlights of the region along with an ad and email campaign to be used in local Chicago newspapers, blogs and outdoors retail speciality stores through Illinois and the greater Midwest.