Online/Offline Media



SeaWorld San Antonio's Journey to Atlantis social media campaign sought to develop relationships with the roller coaster community, build awareness for the new ride, and drive more people to SeaWorld.  The online activities included identifying blogs and forums where roller coaster enthusiasts gathered, and SeaWorld staff then contributed posts and added information to drive people back to their website dedicated to this new ride.  They sought to produce content based on the needs and wants of their audience.  They also created videos and a portfolio of pictures that documented the ride from construction to opening day.  Along with their new website and blogging, SeaWorld utilized YouTube, Flickr, and Veoh.

Their coaster bloggers were a big component of the online and offline efforts.  Through these newly formed relationships with the bloggers and groups such as the American Coaster Enthusiasts, SeaWorld treated them like a VIP audience and invited them to attend the media launch day and to be among the first to ride Journey to Atlantis.  After which, many of these attendees provided their reviews of the ride on YouTube and other social media platforms.  On top of that, SeaWorld has maintained a relationship with the coaster lovers and even attended American Coaster Enthusiasts' annual event in 2008.  Other offline media included television commercials, word of mouth, park brochure or map, saw while in the park, TV or print news story, radio commercial, newspaper ad, passmember communication, Pepsi can promotion, and billboards.  Of these sources of awareness, only television commercials came close to meeting the amount of surveyed visitors who stated they had heard about the ride on the Internet.

Considering the large amount of surveyed visitors who first heard about the ride on the Internet, I would say the social media campaign was a success.  And the SeaWorld staff successfully engaged and stayed in contact with the online community of roller coaster lovers.  The program was also successful because they had a plan that was strategized, implemented and evaluated properly.  Because of the evaluation part, the exit survey, they could officially know how successful their social media efforts had been.  And they were able to translate this into dollars, which speaks to the true success.  From Case Study: ROI of Social Media Campaign for SeaWorld San Antonio - A Year Later, "Overall, the cost per impression for the social media campaign was $0.22 versus $1.00 for television."

Regarding any additional activities they could have utilized to strengthen engagement with users, I believe Facebook could have been used.  Considering the site has so many users, they could have reached even more potential customers, including existing consumers of the SeaWorld brand and not just roller coaster lovers.  They also appeared to abandon this particular social media campaign when the ride opened, in favor of integrating the ride into a more broad social media program for SeaWorld San Antonio, which at the time they still had to develop.  The Veoh account for this ride, for example, has not been updated since 2 years ago.  The company may have lost potential connections with people by not keeping up with the platforms they used.  Maintaining the relationships gained through the social media activities is a critical part of the success beyond opening day and in developing customer loyalty.

The ride, and SeaWorld in general, is about an experience, so utilizing social media was effective for the company because they conveyed their message by using mostly videos and photos.  Social media was also effective in that they were able to identify a target audience, roller coaster lovers, and create a relationship specifically with them and content specifically for them. 

Multi-Generation

Baby Boomers vs. Gen Y

I interviewed my mother, who is a member of the Older Boomers.  She is a freelance writer for online news publications, so she probably has spent more time online than most in her generation.  She largely uses the Internet for research, shopping and emailing but has come to recognize the growing popularity of social media.  She has started two blogs focused on her interests and has joined Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn only to promote her blogs.  She does acknowledge and appreciate the success that businesses and non-profit organizations are having with social media but is not actively involved and engaged in online discussions and communications, although she does enjoy seeking to understand social media and find her place in it.  She rarely uses these platforms for personal reasons, except to research her interests, but she does like the capability to connect with family, mostly children and grandchildren, to stay updated on their lives and see pictures.  This is a big difference with her generation and mine, in that younger generations tend to utilize social media for more personal reasons, such as entertainment and communicating with family and friends.

Although she may be more active online than many of her fellow Boomers, there is one main difference between her views and those of a younger generation, such as Gen Y.  Regarding the ability for endless online conversations, the games, various apps and all-around flashy gimmicks, she believes there is just too much available and too much connecting on a personal level through social media.  Her belief is that much of the interacting and gimmicks available are really unnecessary but thinks maybe the younger generations find it all “fun.”  I believe this stems back to the fact that younger generations are more casual, both personally and professionally, and older generations are more formal in how they conduct themselves and in all their exchanges with the outside world.  An example of this is the online language barrier.  ‘Lol,’ ‘omg,’ and other Internet slang have found their way into much of the communication and marketing conducted online now.  Sometimes these terms have shown up in the workplace as well.  The ‘casual versus formal’ clash is evident in both manners and methods and can severely affect the way people of all ages come together in the workplace and online. This, in my opinion, presents the biggest challenge for businesses that are looking to appeal to all age groups in their marketing. 

It appears that a social media campaign by any company will have to contain multiple components to appeal to varying generations. While a younger age group, such as Gen Y, might respond positively to mobile text marketing or a QR code that takes them to a mobile website, the Boomer generation would appear to react more favorably to an email campaign or would be more likely to join discussion groups. The content would have to vary as well. While pictures and video would most likely prove successful for all generations, Boomers will definitely be looking for straightforward and uncomplicated information. And I believe younger generations would respond to gimmicks, such as "freebies" in a call to action, as well as casual conversations through platforms such as Twitter.