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Consumers Got Off the Hook with RBFF

Throughout the summer, thousands of consumers made their way to the water, thanks to some creative marketing and event planning from RBFF. Not only did the Take Me Fishing Off the Hook pop-up fishing experience get people fishing, it gained national media exposure, too.

The first year of this new experiential marketing program reeled in a total of 2,300 participants and more than 24,000 visitors with events in Minneapolis, New York, DC, Orlando and Pittsburgh.

Tapping into the clout of others, RBFF leveraged Olympic gold medalist and baseball analyst Jessica Mendoza and local social media influencers to spread the word. Through a satellite media tour, Mendoza gave 29 interviews that were picked up by national media outlets, while the influencers contributed a total of more than 950,000 impressions and 11,000 engagements on social media. On top of that, our own social channels drove in 1.1 million impressions.

Geotargeted ads were used to draw consumers in, earning nearly 665,000 impressions, driving consumers to TakeMeFishing.org and leading to more than 2,000 sessions. Those who made it to the events spent 1.5 hours on average learning how to fish from RBFF staff and experts from state fish and wildlife agencies.

More than impressions and visitors, though, Off the Hook worked to build committed participants. Participants were surveyed before and after their experience and twice as many participants said they were “very likely” to go fishing or boating after attending. That’s also good news for our partners, with again twice as many people saying they were “very likely” to make a purchase from one of the Off the Hook sponsors: Bass Pro Shops/Cabela’s, L.L. Bean, and Zebco.

Stay tuned for information on what Off the Hook will look like in 2020!