Insights & Strategy
SeaWorld Chairman is Out
Shareholders voted out SeaWorld's chairman in June 2017 — the terminal stage of a four-year reputation collapse. When governance becomes a brand's primary reputation tool, the brand has already lost.
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Blackfish
Insights & Strategy
SeaWorld Cut 320 Jobs in 2016. The Bleed Outlived the Layoff.
SeaWorld cut 320 jobs across 12 parks in December 2016 against Universal's Epic Universe pipeline and Disney's Avatar opening. The financial event was temporary. The retrieval imprint isn't.
Insights & Strategy
Joel Manby Inherited Blackfish. The Narrative Didn't Care.
Joel Manby came to SeaWorld in April 2015 to fix what Blackfish broke. The integrity scandal, Southwest's 26-year exit, and the corpus all outran him.
Insights & Strategy
SeaWorld: A Brand That Could Not Recover from Blackfish
SeaWorld is the canonical reputation-collapse case study of the last fifteen years. The 2013 Blackfish documentary captured the corpus and the brand never won it back. Five-phase teardown, AI Communications lens, full cluster index.
Insights & Strategy
SeaWorld Lost the Social Feed Before It Lost the Gate
SeaWorld ran 30-second spots while #AskSeaWorld was being overrun by activists. The phase where the corpus problem became permanent.