Jurassic World Gyrosphere ride?

[Allomancer]

Y’all, tweets are just tweets.

Wait, so if I Tweet "Jurassic Gyrosphere boat ride biggest drop in the world" it won't come true?!

 

[Cup_Of_Coffee]

Y’all, tweets are just tweets.

Agreed, however, teasing the biggest Universal IP to a ride that everyone would love is terrible trolling lol. What if they tweeted “Hey wouldn’t Lord Of The Rings be great!!!”

It’s harmless, but strange to me.

 

[JungleSkip]

Agreed, however, teasing the biggest Universal IP to a ride that everyone would love is terrible trolling lol. What if they tweeted “Hey wouldn’t Lord Of The Rings be great!!!”

It’s harmless, but strange to me.

I just don’t know how anyone follows either Universal park Twitter account and thinks, “Yes, they’re being serious this time” after all these years

 

[Allomancer]

Agreed, however, teasing the biggest Universal IP to a ride that everyone would love is terrible trolling lol. What if they tweeted “Hey wouldn’t Lord Of The Rings be great!!!”

It’s harmless, but strange to me.

But there are still... Stranger Things.

 

[Cup_Of_Coffee]

I just don’t know how anyone follows either Universal park Twitter account and thinks, “Yes, they’re being serious this time” after all these years

No I hear you, my point is I’ve never understood the tactic really

 

[JonsMovies]

Universals biggest IP features a fully realized theme park attraction in the movie. Seems to me they're simply referencing that scene and saying wouldn't it be cool if...

 

[Legacy]

You’re missing an extremely crucial ingredient with this, though: positive perception. It’s one thing for Denny’s social media accounts to be self-aware or like, the Hamburger Helper Twitter account ragging on people. Folks find that quirky. But I don’t have to tell you that people obsess over comments from theme park accounts, so when they tweet stuff like this — stuff that seems plausible but isn’t confirmed (let alone realistic) and is just fishing for engagement — it creates a negative connotation that can be tough to shake.

Like, there’s “trolling” and there’s trolling. Unless there really is a gyrosphere ride in the works and they’re trying to generate buzz, this leans toward the latter, and it seems like not the best strategy to me, given the finicky nature of the audience. You’re increasing brand awareness, sure, but you really run the risk of annoying people and souring them on the brand by taking that approach. It’s not the same thing as Burger King posting an ironic meme. Their audience is stoners and single people, not people who get their hopes up and start message boards threads and will resent them if they feel mislead.

(And as a friendly FYI: you don’t need to explain social media marketing to me; I’m a senior director of marketing technology for one of the biggest media companies on the planet.)

It’s not the social media team’s problem that a sub-section of fans hyper analyze everything they say as some sort of clue. And (being someone this happens to not infrequently) efforts to comment around those fans can prove damn near impossible to the point it’s not worth trying. They’re focused on engaging casual fans who, very likely, don’t even know Universal Beijing is happening let alone know Creative was trying to get a gyrosphere ride to work. For those fans, a question like that IS positive engagement.

The Marketing/Social Team are going to be some of the last people to find out what is happening with attractions, in-coming or out-going. More importantly, they’re not going to be tweeting about an attraction they haven’t even started any movement on. When they start tweeting clues, it’ll likely be long after when the fans know everything about what’s coming anyway.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

It’s not the social media team’s problem that a sub-section of fans hyper analyze everything they say as some sort of clue. And (being someone this happens to not infrequently) efforts to comment around those fans can prove damn near impossible to the point it’s not worth trying. They’re focused on engaging casual fans who, very likely, don’t even know Universal Beijing is happening let alone know Creative was trying to get a gyrosphere ride to work. For those fans, a question like that IS positive engagement.

The Marketing/Social Team are going to be some of the last people to find out what is happening with attractions, in-coming or out-going. More importantly, they’re not going to be tweeting about an attraction they haven’t even started any movement on. When they start tweeting clues, it’ll likely be long after when the fans know everything about what’s coming anyway.

All true! The casual audience and the obsessive audience are different, and the latter is smaller -- however, the latter is much more vocal, as you well know. They're the more likely group to engage with social content, and social content of this variety runs the risk of alienating them because it toys with their expectations and desires. And most folks in the obsessive group can tell these posts are facetious, but that still doesn't make it less alienating for them.

Check out the replies on that tweet -- most folks are in on the bit, which is great, but there are more than a few where the sentiment is doubtful or just straight up negative. I won't pretend to know what the social team wants out of this beyond general engagement, but as a general rule, negative sentiment is something you want to avoid. A tweet with a bunch of negative responses from your obsessive fans isn't what you want your casual fan to see. You can't please everyone, obviously -- there will be negative responses to literally every post -- but content like this kinda goes out of its way to poke at people, and they respond with stuff like this from a podcast that meets the criteria to be considered a micro-influencer lol:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1417155635339202565

So I'm just saying it's not the soundest strategy. Obviously the social team has no clue what is or isn't in development, but they should still at least understand every facet of their audience. Teasing rides that aren't coming (even doing it sarcastically) has an above-average risk of backfire. You do this when there really is a gyrosphere ride to talk about ("Hope you guys roll by the park when the ride opens! It's gonna be a ball! [Insert self-aware quip about these lame puns]!"); if not, there are other ways to do this. Like, the social accounts tweets "What are your guys dream rides?" and starts quote tweeting responses; someone replies "I want a JW gyrosphere ride," and they respond with "sounds like a ball."

 

[kingcooger]

The gyrosphere ride vehicle are a ball

It’s a bad dad joke

Moving on

 

[Legacy]

All true! The casual audience and the obsessive audience are different, and the latter is smaller -- however, the latter is much more vocal, as you well know. They're the more likely group to engage with social content, and social content of this variety runs the risk of alienating them because it toys with their expectations and desires. And most folks in the obsessive group can tell these posts are facetious, but that still doesn't make it less alienating for them.

Check out the replies on that tweet -- most folks are in on the bit, which is great, but there are more than a few where the sentiment is doubtful or just straight up negative. I won't pretend to know what the social team wants out of this beyond general engagement, but as a general rule, negative sentiment is something you want to avoid. A tweet with a bunch of negative responses from your obsessive fans isn't what you want your casual fan to see. You can't please everyone, obviously -- there will be negative responses to literally every post -- but content like this kinda goes out of its way to poke at people, and they respond with stuff like this from a podcast that meets the criteria to be considered a micro-influencer lol:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1417155635339202565

So I'm just saying it's not the soundest strategy. Obviously the social team has no clue what is or isn't in development, but they should still at least understand every facet of their audience. Teasing rides that aren't coming (even doing it sarcastically) has an above-average risk of backfire. You do this when there really is a gyrosphere ride to talk about ("Hope you guys roll by the park when the ride opens! It's gonna be a ball! [Insert self-aware quip about these lame puns]!"); if not, there are other ways to do this. Like, the social accounts tweets "What are your guys dream rides?" and starts quote tweeting responses; someone replies "I want a JW gyrosphere ride," and they respond with "sounds like a ball."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1417283930970017793

A reply doesn’t mean much, especially when you look at the ratio and see that it only has 50 replies/retweets while 550 liked the thing and moved on with their day. What they want is THAT positive ratio.

The dozen or so, overly-dramatic “don’t toy with my emotions,” tweets are half a percent of the total engagement they’ve had. It’s negligible and a bit unavoidable.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1417283930970017793

A reply doesn’t mean much, especially when you look at the ratio and see that it only has 50 replies/retweets while 550 liked the thing and moved on with their day. What they want is THAT positive ratio.

The dozen or so, overly-dramatic “don’t toy with my emotions,” tweets are half a percent of the total engagement they’ve had. It’s negligible and a bit unavoidable.

Not all replies are created equal. This one you’re sharing – that account has 54 followers. The one I shared has close to 10k, with probably a lot of mutuals between the accounts. Those followers see that negative response and a negative perception/impression starts to extend beyond that one reply. And that’s not even accounting for any negative sentiment they might share on other channels, like their podcast, which extends it further. These things don’t occur in a vacuum. (Also, in the economy of social engagement, replies >>> likes.)

USH hasn’t ruined itself based on this single tweet thread, but there are safer strategies for a brand account with an incredibly finicky audience to utilize. You can take this same irreverent, self-aware tone and apply it in a way that alienates as few people as possible. Because the overly dramatic, “don’t toy with my emotions” tweets you refer to aren’t a bit unavoidable, they’re completely unavoidable. But you can mitigate them. Trolling your audience -- even when it’s well-intentioned and jokey “trolling” -- is not the safest or smartest way to mitigate, in my experience. That’s all I’m saying here.

 

[Legacy]

Not all replies are created equal. This one you’re sharing – that account has 54 followers. The one I shared has close to 10k, with probably a lot of mutuals between the accounts. Those followers see that negative response and a negative perception/impression starts to extend beyond that one reply. And that’s not even accounting for any negative sentiment they might share on other channels, like their podcast, which extends it further. These things don’t occur in a vacuum. (Also, in the economy of social engagement, replies >>> likes.)

USH hasn’t ruined itself based on this single tweet thread, but there are safer strategies for a brand account with an incredibly finicky audience to utilize. You can take this same irreverent, self-aware tone and apply it in a way that alienates as few people as possible. Because the overly dramatic, “don’t toy with my emotions” tweets you refer to aren’t a bit unavoidable, they’re completely unavoidable. But you can mitigate them. Trolling your audience -- even when it’s well-intentioned and jokey “trolling” -- is not the safest or smartest way to mitigate, in my experience. That’s all I’m saying here.

But they’re not promising anything. It’s not an announcement. They’re not saying a ride is coming. If a podcast that popular incorrectly reads that tweet as a tease and begins talking up something that wasn’t announced or even directly teased, then it’s the podcast that risks looking ignorant, not Universal. Because, again, it’s just a tweet.

Universal’s entire brand, for decades, has been sarcastic (“Fairy tales and pixie dust not your thing?”). The park experience is full of jabs at the audience that rely on a knowing “disrespect” where guests are in on the joke. A tweet about a hypothetical ride that is, in no way, promised IS safe branding and fits the read Universal has on the vast majority of their audience. Again, if people read too much it, that’s not Universal’s problem.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

But they’re not promising anything. It’s not an announcement. They’re not saying a ride is coming. If a podcast that popular incorrectly reads that tweet as a tease and begins talking up something that wasn’t announced or even directly teased, then it’s the podcast that risks looking ignorant, not Universal. Because, again, it’s just a tweet.

Universal’s entire brand, for decades, has been sarcastic (“Fairy tales and pixie dust not your thing?”). The park experience is full of jabs at the audience that rely on a knowing “disrespect” where guests are in on the joke. A tweet about a hypothetical ride that is, in no way, promised IS safe branding and fits the read Universal has on the vast majority of their audience. Again, if people read too much it, that’s not Universal’s problem.

People understand it’s not an announcement or a promise. They get the joke. The problem is not everyone is going to appreciate the joke. If I’m an internal stakeholder here, I’m not worried if a podcast thinks the park is announcing or even teasing a ride; I’m worried about this podcast saying “Don’t hurt us,” haha. It’s that sentiment that you don’t want amplified to their ~10k followers. Like, here’s another significantly more dramatic but not uncommon response:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1417227479815708679

It’s a single reply among many, sure, but the smaller-but-more-engaged obsessives are twitchy. One false tweet amplified by the right account and it’s – like the kids say – RIP for your mentions. You 100% want to avoid that sort of engagement and negative brand perception, especially in this climate. Call me risk-averse, but I would have nixed this the second I saw the brief.

Because it’s not totally true that if people take social content the wrong way, then it’s just their problem. It’s Universal posting the tweets. Again, there are ways to be sarcastic and make puns while also not having people feel baited or trolled. Here’s a troll-free alternate take, free of charge: instead of “Wouldn't having a gyrosphere ride be a ball?” it’s “Riding around in a gyrosphere looks like a ball,” and then turn it into a thread with more puns and the JW account can quote tweet with “can confirm” or “no lie detected” and boom, there. Easy. Super, super, comically easy.

You’d still get some people emotionally overreacting or over-analyzing for a ride announcement; you can never escape that stuff completely. But you’d almost certainly get less negative responses in those veins. It's less risky. The worst you’d get is “this is so corny,” which is a great response if you’re USH. “Don’t hurt us” is not lol.

 

[Ron101]

If this was in fact a joke tweet, they should of used a photo of the JW gyrosphere in predator cove and said something like "The/That Jurassic World Gyrosphere ride must have been a ball." Instead of putting it in the tense that hints a new ride.

 

[Legacy]

People understand it’s not an announcement or a promise. They get the joke. The problem is not everyone is going to appreciate the joke. If I’m an internal stakeholder here, I’m not worried if a podcast thinks the park is announcing or even teasing a ride; I’m worried about this podcast saying “Don’t hurt us,” haha. It’s that sentiment that you don’t want amplified to their ~10k followers. Like, here’s another significantly more dramatic but not uncommon response:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1417227479815708679

Because it’s not totally true that if people take social content the wrong way, then it’s just their problem. It’s Universal posting the tweets. Again, there are ways to be sarcastic and make puns while also not having people feel baited or trolled. Here’s a troll-free alternate take, free of charge: instead of “Wouldn't having a gyrosphere ride be a ball?” it’s “Riding around in a gyrosphere looks like a ball,” and then turn it into a thread with more puns and the JW account can quote tweet with “can confirm” or “no lie detected” and boom, there. Easy. Super, super, comically easy.

You’d still get some people emotionally overreacting or over-analyzing for a ride announcement; you can never escape that stuff completely. But you’d almost certainly get less negative responses in those veins. It's less risky. The worst you’d get is “this is so corny,” which is a great response if you’re USH. “Don’t hurt us” is not lol.

You’re cherry picking a tweet from a hyper fan though. The tweet isn’t for him (it’s for people who don’t put a HHN Legion in their handle).

Furthermore, your “alternate tweet” doesn’t prevent and more grousing about a “false tease.” For people who know about the gyrosphere ride attempt, ANY mention of “gyrosphere” can be interpreted a tease. It’s the same thing we see any time the HHN handle tweets anything; people freak out and treat like a hint. If Universal Orlando tweeted about the SLoP float in the SuperStar parade, Orlando marks would start asking if they’re bringing the ride to Orlando.

“Safe” social media marketing has no unique voice. It’s not fun. Universal cares about pushing an algorithm and the more engagement they get, the more people they reach. The misguided expectations of rando fans who think they know better cannot be a factor in establishing that engagement.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

You’re cherry picking a tweet from a hyper fan though. The tweet isn’t for him (it’s for people who don’t put a HHN Legion in their handle).

Furthermore, your “alternate tweet” doesn’t prevent and more grousing about a “false tease.” For people who know about the gyrosphere ride attempt, ANY mention of “gyrosphere” can be interpreted a tease. It’s the same thing we see any time the HHN handle tweets anything; people freak out and treat like a hint. If Universal Orlando tweeted about the SLoP float in the SuperStar parade, Orlando marks would start asking if they’re bringing the ride to Orlando.

“Safe” social media marketing has no unique voice. It’s not fun. Universal cares about pushing an algorithm and the more engagement they get, the more people they reach. The misguided expectations of rando fans who think they know better cannot be a factor in establishing that engagement.

Not a cherry pick, just citing one possible reaction to social content of this nature. It's obviously on the emotional end of the spectrum, but there are responses here that are similar to this, they're just less melodramatic. Also, his status as hyper rando fan is completely irrelevant because tweets aren't "for" or "not for" anyone. If that were true or even possible, accounts would only tweet to specific audience segments, but that's not how the platform functions. Anyone can engage with the content, even if it's not "for" them.

You said yourself -- "Universal cares about pushing an algorithm and the more engagement they get, the more people they reach." What happens when the engagement they get is toxic and negative, and when they reach more people, it's because a bunch of people are pissed at them? Unless you're saying all engagement is good engagement? I don't think there's a social media director alive who would agree with you there.

I also acknowledged that those alternate ideas would not prevent any grousing -- I've said to you nearly half a dozen times now that there's no avoiding some level of complaining. Mitigation is the point. I don't think USH dodged a bullet here or anything, this isn't a drastic situation at all, but it is a risky approach. My alternate is the same exact joke; it's the same exact tone; it's the same exact format. It accomplishes everything there's does, but it avoids trolling (or "trolling") about the idea of a possible new ride.

Like I said, you can call me risk-averse but I've been on the front line of more than a few social media kerfuffles and this one definitely points itself in that direction. It's one hyper rando fan this time, but they might not always be so lucky.

 

[JungleSkip]

Are we seriously arguing this much about a tongue in cheek tweet that barely has any social media engagement?

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

Are we seriously arguing this much about a tongue in cheek tweet that barely has any social media engagement?

Lol we’re not even arguing about the tweet, this is a social media strategy debate at this point. And I’m only responding to comments where I’m being directly addressed, so idk. Can they just close the thread?

 

[Legacy]

Not a cherry pick, just citing one possible reaction to social content of this nature. It's obviously on the emotional end of the spectrum, but there are responses here that are similar to this, they're just less melodramatic. Also, his status as hyper rando fan is completely irrelevant because tweets aren't "for" or "not for" anyone. If that were true or even possible, accounts would only tweet to specific audience segments, but that's not how the platform functions. Anyone can engage with the content, even if it's not "for" them.

You said yourself -- "Universal cares about pushing an algorithm and the more engagement they get, the more people they reach." What happens when the engagement they get is toxic and negative, and when they reach more people, it's because a bunch of people are pissed at them? Unless you're saying all engagement is good engagement? I don't think there's a social media director alive who would agree with you there.

I also acknowledged that those alternate ideas would not prevent any grousing -- I've said to you nearly half a dozen times now that there's no avoiding some level of complaining. Mitigation is the point. I don't think USH dodged a bullet here or anything, this isn't a drastic situation at all, but it is a risky approach. My alternate is the same exact joke; it's the same exact tone; it's the same exact format. It accomplishes everything there's does, but it avoids trolling (or "trolling") about the idea of a possible new ride.

Like I said, you can call me risk-averse but I've been on the front line of more than a few social media kerfuffles and this one definitely points itself in that direction. It's one hyper rando fan this time, but they might not always be so lucky.

I mean, I had to click through “See more replies” in order to find that tweet. So it sure feels like you cherry-picked the sole genuinely argumentative reply.

There is no way to stop pedantic know-it-alls from replying on Twitter, and theme park hyper fans ARE pedantic know-it-alls. You’re social media strategy concerns are focused on mitigating the response from a small portion of Universal’s fan-base whose response refuses to be mitigated. You can not like tone or style of Universal’s social media presence, but it has been successful for years while differentiating itself from the safer, intentionally inoffensive Disney voice.

Until Universal’s social media team actually steps in it or changes what they’re doing, I’m pretty certain they’re satisfied with what they’re doing. If a tweet is seen by 1,000 people, putting in the effort to change 2 negative replies to 1 negative reply is flat unnecessary.

 

[Freak]

I know this is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek post, but if you have many people who want to see a legit gyrosphere ride at USH and they see this, can you blame them for giving their hopes up?

While I saw it for what it was, I do think it was unwise for the social media team to post something like this and accidentally tease something that isn’t happening.