Dwayne McMulkin

Responsible for overseeing the development of park marketing and communication strategies for a portfolio of amusement parks across North America that includes a holistic view of pricing and promotional strategies, new product launches and limited time events to deliver growth in attendance, revenue, and the unique guest base. Accomplishments and areas of focus include:

• Recruiting, developing and managing remote brand activation, digital, social, and PR/communications teams at each property.
• Leading the launch of major new capital projects including Yukon Striker and Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland, the Zambezi Zinger roller coaster and full park re-brand at Worlds of Fun, Adventure Port at Kings Island, and Top Thrill 2 at Cedar Point.
• Partnering with central marketing stakeholders and agencies to plan and execute digital marketing, paid advertising, loyalty & CRM initiatives, and market research.
• Growing attendance and membership for all three ticket categories - Season Pass, Single-Day Visitors and Groups.
• Identify opportunities for limited time, promotional events to both drive incremental attendance and enhance the guest experience such as KidZfest at Canada's Wonderland.
• Leveraging guest data to implement a series of promotional pricing and experience strategies to attract incremental audiences for each park property (i.e. at Canada's Wonderland, built out the content, product and payment capability on the WeChat platform to better penetrate the Chinese tourism and growing local resident base).
• Manage all advertising campaigns for each park in collaboration with both internal and external agency partners.
• Oversee all owned media channels for each park including earned media, organic social media and content development to promote all aspects of the guest experience, increase engagement and drive traffic to park websites.

Responsible for driving attendance and admission revenue through the development and execution of a strategic communications and media plan to acquire, retain and develop the active guest base for the park. Accomplishments and areas of focus include:

• Loyalty and CRM-based marketing programs to drive both Season Pass and Single Day Ticket Sales from new and returning guests via digital, social, direct, mobile and mass media channels (including media planning).
• Identifying market gaps and emerging opportunities, along with designing and piloting new initiatives such as the launch of WeChat Pay to reach new audiences and increase market share.
• Analytics, research and business intelligence lead to identify shifting consumer trends, better understand the Wonderland guest experience and evaluation of marketing program and campaign effectiveness.
• Responsible for building a Partner Marketing program that aligns with the Wonderland brand to drive ticket sales, build awareness, and enhance the guest experience. This included value-added promotions with our media partners and working with great brands such as Pizza Pizza, Subway, Coke, the Santa Claus Parade, LEGO, Cineplex, and Hasbro.
• Enhancing the in-park guest experience through our mobile app, in-park signage, and queue line TV programs.
• Tourism, government & industry relations such as grant & funding management, partnership programs and Board of Director participation with the Regional Tourism Office.

Responsible for leading the development and execution of marketing and communications strategies to grow market share, drive traffic and build both the Toys R Us and Babies R Us brands in Canada. Accomplishments and areas of focus included:

• The strategic development and launch of R Club, a proprietary CRM and loyalty program/platform that focused on improving the customer experience with our brands and guiding the customer journey through various lifecycle stages.
• Partnering with various brands to bring a regular cadence of events to all stores such as LEGO make-and-take days to drive traffic and sales.
• Owning the digital marketing strategy to deliver double-digit traffic growth and Return on Ad Spend for both the Toys R Us and Babies R Us brands. This included guiding the paid search, display, digital flyer, website, email, remarketing, social and content strategies.
• Implementing a structured approach to supporting the customer journey by guiding the digital marketing strategy through Awareness, Engagement, Inspiration and Conversion stages for a defined group of target audiences.
• Partnering with Finance, established a marketing analytics foundation to improve decision-making around campaign performance and shifts in the media mix.
• Increased flyer effectiveness by 200bps by shifting investment from traditional print to digital flyer, social and display programs in certain markets that over index on digital maturity.
• Identified traditional channels to reduce investment in (i.e. radio for secondary-level promotions) through a structured testing approach to help fund increased reach and impression share in high-performing digital media channels.

Responsible for driving customer acquisition, retention and sales/customer growth by leveraging a variety of digital and direct marketing channels including email, digital, social, staples.ca, direct mail, in-store activation and store events. Accomplishments and areas of focus included:

• In 2015, a series of category-level incrementality programs were built to measure the impact and return from paid digital marketing on retail sales.
• Program lead for all corporate loyalty and CRM initiatives including AIR MILES, private label credit and best customer programs. During this time, the active customer base grew by 6% as a result of new acquisition and customer lifecycle initiatives and the launch of a mass event strategy.
• X-channel lead for all communications and marketing related to seasonal events including Back to School, Black Friday and Holiday.
• Responsible for the Staples Canada Innovation program, leading innovation pilot projects and facilitating the application of a structured innovation process across the organization. 2015 initiatives included: testing new product and service offerings (i.e. Staples Learning Centre, Party & Education); new ways to reach new customers through automated retail; the use of technology to better enable associates to engage with customers.