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With the arrival of pandas in Memphis, visitors can now find out about Elvis Presley's strange diet of peanut butter and banana sandwiches and the panda's strange diet of bamboo on the same day.
This is one of the many ways the pandas, Ya Ya and Le Le, are being marketed. They are the fourth set of pandas to be housed in a U.S. zoo and Memphis is taking advantage of this rare commodity to make the Memphis Zoo a destination, rather than something to do when you're in Memphis for another reason.
"The reach of the zoo is broadened now," says Regena Bearden, vice president of marketing for the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau. "They've got a great zoo in St. Louis, but they don't have pandas. This makes the zoo an attractor and broadens its marketing reach."
Bearden says the pandas also will bring attention to other zoo attractions that could be taken for granted. Those attractions will see increased visitors who attend the zoo because of the pandas. Archer Malmo and the zoo are working up estimates of how many more visitors the zoo can expect because of the pandas, but figures are not yet available.
"Pandas are rare and historically draw large crowds for the zoos that have them," says Ginger Porter,...