Q Is there a solution to the queues at Disneyland?
Disneyland has turned out to be a big failure in public relations. For the purpose of a course that I teach part-time at a local university, I started monitoring news of the theme park since last May and discovered to my amusement that at least 90 per cent of the media coverage was negative. Disney made a most appropriate topic on negative PR for my students last semester. As their final project, these students offered some viable ideas to improve Disney's PR efforts.
So why would college students succeed where a multinational corporation failed? Surely, the students had the benefit of hindsight. But more than that, perhaps, it was their lack of a legacy, a cultural baggage that seemed to have plagued Disney HK from the start.
The theme park operator has been too complacent about foisting its own policies and practices on the rest of the world, to the extent of ignoring local conditions and customs. It further made the mistake of tolerating instead of embracing PR as a management function.
Each time Disney had to face up to issues, only an unnamed 'spokeswoman' would face the media. With senior executives hiding behind lame public statements, Disney HK has given no impression that it understands proactive PR, which involves strategic planning at the top.
The latest ticketing fiasco is just another case in point. Any man in the street could have told Disney's management that the Lunar New Year break runs for more than a week in mainland China. It shouldn't have been surprising to see mainlanders flocking to the gate on the fourth and fifth day of the Lunar New Year.
