Earlier this week SeaWorld invited me out for a press event for the opening of their newest roller-coaster, the Manta. Usually, these things involve doing something that would theoretically be fun if it wasn’t for the fact that you have to spend the entire time being pitched.

They are a lot like going on one of those free ski vacations you get from the timeshare people, and just as soul sucking.

Why did I decide to go?

Well, it was SeaWorld (which I hadn’t been to in years), they were getting me in for free (which is always good) and Ted had set it up, which meant that it was bound to be fun.

What’s my verdict?

It was more than fun, it was an enlightening look at how a large corporation is using Social Media effectively.

Let’s take a look inside, shall we?

Act One

Busch Entertainment (the company that owns SeaWorld) has a simple job, to fill their parks by convincing you and I to buy into their story. They need us to believe what they believe, and to feel the passion that they feel. Every last cent of their marketing budget goes into telling as many people as they can find about this magic.

They cast their nets wide, picking up radio, television and print placements by the millions across the world. This is all well and good but unfortunately it only gives breadth, not depth to their marketing. They get, eyeball for eyeball, exactly what they pay for and the message that people receive is sterile and impersonal.

Intrinsically, they know this.

That’s why they spend huge sums to send their animals out for television appearances, educational program, and other events outside of the park. They travel the country constantly selling their message, trying to humanize what they do for the families who are deciding how they should spend their precious vacation budgets. It’s an attempt to dig deeper into the minds and hearts of those they are trying to reach and help them see what Sea World trainers and employees are exposed to on a daily basis.

What they tripped over this weekend was how Social Media can allow them to do both.

Act Two

First, let me introduce you to the cast of characters selected for this trip: Janice Croze, Gwen Bell, Arianne Segerman, Tara Kuczykowski, Lori Falcon, Katja Presnal, Audrey McClellan, Alex Schek and Julia Allison. This motley crew of bloggers and entrepreneurial types saw this event from wildly different perspectives. You had educators like Gwen, gadget-guys like Alex, niche bloggers like Tara and “lifecasters” like Julia. Each has a platform and each was given no instructions other than to take in the event for what it was.

That was the first smart thing SeaWorld did, they did not obsess about controlling the message. The truth is, bloggers are a persnickity species that gets all antsy when Big Brother tries to tell us how to think (it’s doubleplus bad). More to the point, if you give us too tight a box to work within, we’ll either walk away or do the absolute minimum necessary to fulfill our obligations.

Good, bad or otherwise, it’s a fact of life.

The second smart thing they did was that they gave us tools. They shot video, took photographs and gave us access to the type of professional quality media that helps us tell better stories. They also let us shoot our own pictures and take our own video to use as we wished. This added another layer of transparency, if things went sour it wouldn’t take long for it to get out. They were open, helpful and startlingly happy about empowering us to do our jobs.

What did they get for putting their trust in us?

Well, they have about 300 tweets (that’s about 100 per day, up from the 5-10 a day they normally received) from people who were legitimately excited about being shown around a park they may have never seen before. People who cared and who expressed that passion in a way that made sense to them, who personalized the message, and delivered it through their networks to close to 50,000 followers.

You can see what it looked like here.

Additionally, by my grossly inaccurate back of the envelope math, if 50% of the people at this event blogged about it (which wasn’t a requirement), they would have had this message delivered to an additional 250,000 eyeballs.

For those who are counting, that means that even if no one re-tweeted or re-blogged the experience, ten bloggers doing what we like to do (typing incessantly and describing whatever sometimes interesting thing we happen to be doing at the moment) was worth 300,000 “ad impressions.”

What did this cost them?

The same thing it costs them anytime they put on an event for the media — a hotel room, time and the price of sending people out to make sure we had a good time. Remember, we weren’t the only media present. Radio, television and print journalists were all wandering around the park, experiencing the event from their own vantage. This was just the first time they had decided to let bloggers into the stable.

Act Three

The short version is that for the cost of ten extra press passes, SeaWorld received a pile of good will and some invaluable exposure — a rousing success by any standards.

Even so, this post isn’t to say that companies like Busch Entertainment should spend all of their marketing budgets courting bloggers. Besides being completely ridiculous, there are a pile of very good reasons why traditional media buys and educational programs are important.

The point of my little tale is to present you with one place where Social Media works.

It works when there is a story to tell. It works when your selling point is education. It works when people aren’t showing up to your door because you are the cheapest or most convenient alternative, but because they’ve bought into your magic. It works because the people you are empowering are just that, people. People who tweet, talk and type about what they like.

What does all of this mean if you happen to be in the position to make buying decisions and are wondering whether bloggers should be a part of your mix? Keep in mind that bloggers provide a very particular kind of PR that’s much more closely related to testimonials than endorsement.

Gwen Bell said it best when she said that we see events like this as stimuli, as fuel for the fire. Ask yourself whether you can provide enough of that fuel to make someone care. If you can, then tapping into the “conversation” may be for you.

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