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When does a brand become problematic?


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I am not particularly a fan of the Six Flags brand. Don't get me wrong there's some parks in the chain that I would absolutely love to visit someday but the brand itself is problematic. The reason I singled Six Flags out is mainly because they are the most universally known amusement park chain. If you're an enthusiast you know about chains like Cedar Fair and Herschend but most GP know about Six Flags; and to an extent Sea World but I'll get back to that later.

Here's the problem- no parks have proper brand identity. With the exception of 3 parks, 12 properties have the name "Six Flags" slapped on them. It seems lazy when you have parks with cool names like Magic Mountain, Great Adventure, Great America, Discovery Kingdom, Fiesta Texas, etc. I understand some parks are literally named after their region with the name "Six Flags": Over Texas, Over Georgia, St. Louis, America, and so on but changes can be made.

Then you have the combined announcement videos where park patrons see how much they're loved- "Great Adventure gets a ground up single rail while St. Louis gets another flat ride." I understand not every park can get a big ride but combining your announcements seems to damage your brand. 

Now look at Sea World and the controversy they've been facing. There are 5 major thrill parks in their chain and 3 of them have the name "Sea World" slapped on them. If they didn't have the Blackfish controversy, I wouldn't include them on here but given there's 3 of the same parks, the controversy caries where as the Busch parks are left alone. 

Finally look at chains like Cedar Fair and Herschend where their brand is almost transparent. Yes their parks are similar but if you were an average member of the GP, you'd never know that Wild Adventures and Silver Dollar City are owned by the same company- the same can be said for parks like Carowinds and Canada's Wonderland. By letting their parks have their own independent identities, Cedar Fair and Herschend have built in deniability from a PR standpoint. The Shoot the Rapids incident affected Cedar Point but not Cedar Fair as a whole- compare that to someone dying on the Batman ride at Six Flags over Georgia or someone getting their leg severed on the Superman ride at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom.

Would it be beneficial for chains like Six Flags and Sea World to take a page out of Cedar Fair and Herschend's book in terms of branding?

 

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3 minutes ago, DiamondbackFan said:

Cedar Fair's brand recognition is so weak, they can't use it to license parks in international markets.  SeaWorld and Six Flags are able to do these deals because people outside of North America know their brands and are willing to pay for the name to be attached to parks.

That is lke comparing apples to oranges, though.  CF standardizes things (uniforms, SOPs, etc) across their properties, but the only thing that screams that it is a CF property is the Cedar Fair SUPERVISOR shirt that they wear ;)  While the parks have similiar "feels" they maintain a unique identifty.  Investors may want to put a Six Flags banner they open overseas, wth SIX collecting a royalty fee, but how many have actually opened?  The few they had were sold off or ended when SIX had the mid 00's problems and the mega projects in China and the Middle East are yet to come to fruition.  (I think I remember China was cancelled).  

If CF chose to go international, I don't think we would see Cedar Fair-Dubai or even Kings Island-Dubai (how about Dubai's Adventure?).  I thnk we would see a management fee or a consulting fee.  If the park fails, much less risky than having a brand association.

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