COSI Membership Mania & Gift Membership
THE CHALLENGE
COSI, the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, relies on its holiday season as the most critical revenue period of its fiscal year, with ambitious membership targets. The traditional approach had been straightforward: promote gift memberships during the holiday shopping season. Just weeks before launch, COSI recognized an opportunity to expand beyond gifting alone and also capture people looking to buy or renew a membership for themselves. That meant building two distinct campaigns, one for gift-givers and one for self-purchasers, without letting either offer cannibalize the other or confuse consumers about which deal applied to them, all through a multi-channel strategy across digital and traditional media during the busiest marketing season of the year.
THE OBJECTIVE
The objective was to grow COSI's holiday revenue beyond what a single promotion could deliver, by capturing gift-givers and self-purchasers as two fully addressable audiences rather than one blended target. Success meant each offer needed to feel tailored to the person receiving it: rich and celebratory enough to be a can't-miss gift for someone shopping for others, lean and immediate enough to convert someone ready to buy for themselves. Just as important, the two offers needed to grow COSI's total membership base together, not trade sales back and forth between the same pool of buyers. The true measure of success wasn't strong performance from either campaign alone, but incremental growth across the entire holiday period.
THE APPROACH
Hunter Marketing built two distinct campaigns from the ground up, each with its own offer, design language and media plan. Gift Membership centered on a simple proposition: give one year, get a second year free, paired with six vouchers to marquee family events, including Disney on Ice, Monster Jam and the Ringling Bros. Circus, adding $200 in value and turning it into a complete holiday gift solution. Its visual identity leaned festive and celebratory, built to stop shoppers browsing for the perfect gift, and ran across print, broadcast, out-of-home, radio and digital to reach that audience wherever they were shopping.
Membership Mania took the opposite creative approach: a straightforward buy one year, get one free deal for people ready to treat themselves after a season of gift-giving. Its design language was leaner and more direct, built for quick recognition and fast conversion rather than gift-worthy sentiment, and it ran digital-only to efficiently reach self-buyers and renewals where they were already making purchase decisions.
Separate landing pages and clear calls to action kept the two offers distinct from first impression through checkout, so customers always knew which deal they were looking at. Running the campaigns in parallel, each engineered for its audience, let Hunter Marketing grow COSI's holiday membership base without one offer cannibalizing the other.
THE RESULTS
$2M+
Revenue, Exceeding Goal By 67%
$250K
In Sales in the First Five Days
62.25%
Increase in Sales, YoY
Programmatic Ads
Programmatic Ads
