Visit Kankakee County: Can Bathroom Humor Be Funny? Do Bears Poop In The Woods?

Yep. We went there… again. And we don’t regret it one little bit.

In 2019, GrahamSpencer created a disruptive restroom takeover campaign during the Illinois Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Chicago to promote our long history of creatively serving the tourism industry. In the wake of that successful effort, we were pleased to receive a call from Visit Kankakee County, the Illinois visitors bureau responsible for promoting and leveraging the Chicago Bears annual training camp, which took place at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, IL from 2002 to 2019. Executive Director Staci Wilken wanted to explore the possibility of doing something equally fun and effective to leverage the impending presence of tens of thousands of football-crazed Bears fans in her region the late summer of 2019. 

As fans arrived in Kankakee County from all directions, GS-designed digital billboards depicted scenes of Chicago Bears fans experiencing Kankakee’s great outdoors in football helmets and jerseys. As their journey continued to the campus of Olivet Nazarene University, they were greeted by Visit Kankakee County staffers outfitted in branded clothing and an interactive onsite activation featuring a massive banner that read “Bear In Mind, There’s a Lot More To Do In Kankakee County Than Just Watch Football.”
To connect with visitors outside of the event, entrance windows and restroom mirrors at restaurants and hotels were cased in window clings to convey the message that off the gridiron, missing opportunities to adventure in Kankakee County would be unbearable

Digitally, GrahamSpencer designed organic and user-generated messages allowed visitors to insert themselves in the various Kankakee County scenes depicted on restroom mirrors adorned in Chicago Bears and rival team fan gear. Targeting social media users, our hashtags grouped visitor photos and helped track results.

To reach visitors digitally in all other areas of Kankakee County, our team created high-quality digital display and interstitial advertisements for VKC’s geofenced, re-marketing campaign that led visitors to the DMO’s website for an in-depth look into what Kankakee County offered for a next visit. The three-week campaign generated an impressive click-through rate (CTR) of .45%.

Staci Wilkens and Visit Kankakee County wanted visitors to arrive as fans of the Chicago Bears but leave as fans of Kankakee County. Touchdown!