2016 National Park Service Centennial

Dear colleagues,

 

My name is Donald Leadbetter, and I'm with the National Park Service's Centennial Office. I had the pleasure of meeting with many of you at IPW this past June in Orlando. As you know, NPS is celebrating its centennial next year, and I sincerely appreciated the interest that you showed in receiving information about our plans. 
I'd like to share with you information, tools, links, and resources about the centennial that I hope you'll find useful.

 

Overview/General Info

• In commemoration of the centennial, the National Park Service and National Park Foundation have launched a public-engagement campaign called Find Your Park.
• This is the largest marketing campaign in the history of the Park Service.
• Find Your Park public service announcement  - downloadable at NAB Public Service
• The campaign has a heavy focus on social and digital promotion = the Find Your Park website and extensive social promotion via #FindYourPark on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
• The Find Your Park campaign corporate sponsors are American Express, Budweiser, Subaru, Disney, Coca-Cola, REI, Humana, and Coleman. Each sponsor is bringing the Find Your Park and centennial message to their customers and will be activating their sponsorship through a variety of projects.
• Celebrity ambassadors are helping spread the Find Your Park message: campaign co-chairs Michelle Obama and Laura Bush; Bill Nye; Roslyn Sanchez; Bella Thorne; Terrance J; and Mary Lambert. The campaign also features an arts-project partnership with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRecord initiative.
• Many additional partners (media, tourism, marketing, etc.) are helping deploy the campaign, including CBS, Clear Channel Outdoor, Complex Media, NYC & Company, National Association of Broadcasters, Outdoor Advertising Association of America, Outfront Media, Branded Cities, and WhoSay.
• NPS Centennial Site

Over the next 16 months additional information about events, projects, and programs will be posted to both the Find Your Park website and the NPS Centennial Site.

 

Find Your Park Campaign and Centennial Tools

With the Find Your Park campaign as the public face of the centennial commemoration, we've made it easy for any partner to support and leverage the campaign by using the tools available at www.NextCenturyforParks.org. Once you register with the site, head to the "Tools" section to find:

• Complete information about the campaign
• Find Your Park logos and graphics
• Creative display materials - banners, posters, table tents, and rack cards
• Custom display templates
• Digital graphics
• Many more tools and additional information

All of these resources are available for you to use and to share with members of the travel trade. NPS would love to see the Find Your Park message brought directly to the foreign travel trade and their clients via US Commercial Service! It's easy to jump onto the social media campaign with #FindYourPark, and the logos, graphics, and banners can all be downloaded and used as they are or integrated into other materials and collateral.

 

Additional Events, Partnerships, and Programs

These may not be directly useful to you, but FYI:

• Every Kid in a Park - national program to encourage 4^th graders to visit parks. Free admission for them and their families for a year
• National Endowment for the Arts – “Imagine Your Parks” arts grant initiative
• U.S. Mint producing an NPS Centennial three-coin series
• National Geographic Channel – eight-part documentary focusing on wildlife
• National Geographic Magazine – parks-coverage in every 2016 issue, including an issue dedicated to Yellowstone National Park
• Bio-Blitz 2016 = 24-hour citizen science event to be headquartered in Washington, DC with simultaneous events across the country
• Many unique special events and programs planned in parks and communities across the country

Events and Key Dates

• Search the Find Your Park and NPS Event calendars for park-specific events
• December 2015 – National Christmas Tree Lighting
• January 2016 – Rose Parade (Centennial themed)
• February 2016 – IMAX movie release
• April 2016 - National Park Week, free admission to parks
• August 2016 - 100th birthday on August 25th
• Additional Fee Free days to be scheduled throughout 2016

 

We'll be developing additional communications materials over the next month that I'll be sure to share with this group. Please feel free to forward this information to your Travel & Tourism Commercial Service colleagues, and let me know if you have any questions. On behalf of the National Park Service, we sincerely appreciate your work in promoting parks to international visitors and the foreign travel trade.

 

Kind regards,

-Donald

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Donald Leadbetter

Partnership Coordinator

Centennial Office

National Park Service

1849 C Street NW, Room 2354

Washington, DC  20240

202-208-2316 office

530-310-5170 cell