On Saturday the 2nd of November the new
for 2013 ride, the Smiler broke down at the Alton Towers resort for the second
time this year. Although this time it was a bit more serious. Parts from the
rollercoaster had fallen from the track and hit passengers while they were
riding. Although the story of this is very serious, it is not what I want to
focus on.
What I want to look at is how in this current time
how this will affect Alton Towers as a brand. With the world of social media
being at it’s biggest ever, it’s not a good time to have a crisis like this.
With people seeing the incident take place, then going to social media sites
such as Twitter and Facebook to share this news. News travels fast, with this information then
trending on both of these websites, allowing everyone too see it. People are
easily able to find out this information, and they begin to think in Alton
Towers in a different way. Is it not safe in the park? They may begin to
question the brand.
With many people reading things on these social
networking sites, and being naive enough to think that what has been posted by
standard users is fact, when its not. Most users will not even look up this
story further, i.e on news websites too get the full story. They will take the
user posted comment as the truth.
I believe that it is this that will give the brands
a bad representation; they don’t get the chance to give their side of events and this a negative side to social media.
Image Source - http://tbrown.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/the-smiler.jpg
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