Seaworld Case Study

Seeing Seaworld
The concept of ‘Seaworld’ began in 1960 when the idea to create an underwater restaurant was deemed unfeasible, the focus then shifted to creating a marine zoo. 50 years on Seaworld’s mission statement is to “ inspire guests through education and up-close experiences and to care for and protect animals’. However, Seaworld’s customer numbers have been steadily decreasing from 5.35 million in 2012 to 4.979 million in 2014 (jh,201). This decrease was largely a flow-on effect from the public outrage following the release of the 2013 film ‘Blackfish’. To prevent any further market erosion we have focused our efforts to effectively utilising Seaworld’s online social media presence. This proposal is directed to Seaworld’s Chief Creative officer, Scott D Helmstedter. Firstly, we will look at Seaworld’s current online presences, their key competitors online activities as well as a look into the mind of a Seaworld social media consumer. Secondly, we will use these insights to derive a market research problem from Seaworld’s social media management problem. Thirdly, we will develop an approach to Seaworld’ market research

The most memorable campaign in their eyes was when Seaworld posted ‘live’ snippets of an orca show from the front row of the stadium on Instagram. I asked about Blackfish and while the respondent was disheartened while watching the film they would still go to Seaworld because “you’re guaranteed to see an orca”. When asked on their thoughts on Blackfish the respondent expanded on the fact that they felt that Seaworld’s response to the film seems to attract more attention than the film itself. The respondent says that they often see a string of comments following a Seaworld reply to a customer complaint whenever they are on their twitter