Scenario
You are the regional marketing director of a theme park in the southeastern United States that is part of a global brand. The chief marketing officer (CMO) of global operations has called upon you to help coordinate the marketing tasks related to rolling out an emergency response due to a recent safety and injury incident at one of the parks resulting in serious injuries to employees and customers. The parks were closed immediately following the incident to ensure safety measures for customers and employees and to deploy the needed safety measures.
Now, as the theme park is all set to reopen, the CMO has called you to take a lead in planning the marketing strategy for the same. Your responsibility is to design a phased strategy for marketing the reopening of all parks. Your strategy should address the critical objectives such as maximum safety, crisis communication, customer satisfaction, and profit potential. You must coordinate marketing strategy with corporate strategy, as failure or success of the marketing strategy can have a direct impact on the brand.
As a first step, you will perform an analysis to understand the implications of reopening on brand equity. In this analysis you will identify the groups of stakeholders that are affected by the reopening and also plan the communication strategy for before and after the parks’ reopening. Also, you will identify the roles and responsibilities of key functional departments that are going to play an important role in the reopening process. This analysis will help you develop a strategic marketing plan to address the reopening of the park and also to develop an effective crisis communication plan.
In this milestone, you will create a PowerPoint presentation that will include brand analysis and the implications of reopening on the brand equity and functional departments, including their roles and responsibilities in the reopening process.
Prompt
Brand Analysis and Implications—In this part of the project, you will present the brand implications of reopening the park in the course scenario. Your presentation should include the following critical factors:
Determine the essential factors that can impact the brand equity when reopening the park. (slides 1–3)
Describe the importance of brand equity to the organization. (slide 1)
Provide positive implications (slide 2):
Safety concerns addressed and communicated
Community and local government support for reopening
Employee support for reopening
Provide negative implications (slide 3):
Social media negative reactions
Employee negative concerns
Operational concerns for safety
Describe the strategic communication plan that should occur before and after the park reopens. Your responses should address the following (slides 4–8):
Identify three key stakeholder groups from this list:
Employees
Customers
Government agencies
Communities
Vendors
Describe each stakeholder’s interests in the organization.
Describe their communication needs.
Identify the best mode for communicating with them based on their needs.
Describe what impact reopening the park could have on each identified stakeholder (low, medium, or high). Why?