Mouse Mistakes

If you’ve ever been to Disney World, you’ve noticed that employees (cast members) all wear name badges that are typically first name with the home town under the name. It’s been a very effective consumer activity, one which almost everybody in the industry followed.  Guests would delight in seeing somebody from their state and/or home town. Wait staff would tell you about people who would tip more and kids would play the equivalent of the license plate game, tracking down people from where they live, all over the parks.

It was an amazingly subtle but effective brand/marketing activity for the Mouse.  I say was because they ditched it.

Yup. Some marketing wonk in Disney decided to take that little tiny piece of brand real estate and change it.  Because of the 50 year celebration, they re-issued all of the name tags so that you saw a branding message about the happiest celebration on earth. Uh Huh.

The net effect of this exercise? Pissed off employees and customers talking more about this ‘loss’ and talking about the pissed off employees vs. talking about the happiest celebration on earth.  It was fascinating to ask employees “What happened to the name badges” and watch the robot-like smiles turn to growls as they complained about the “jerks, goofs, idiots, morons, and those people in head office”.  Ah, yep, those would be quotes.

Disney, the master at controlling the message, making everybody happy happy, has hundreds, if not thousands of ‘cast members’ all grumbling outwardly to the customers.  I randomly asked 20 employees at the various parks and, to the person, got a grumbling, growling, not happy answer, all pointing fingers at, well, see the above list.

The more important observation? The guests walking around talking about it. In lines, people would ask the employee in front of the Ride.  At the gift shops, people were asking the clerks.  At the restaurants, you guessed it, people were asking the staff about it. The responses, as you can imagine, were not pleasant. Ranging from the polite, yes it is a change, to the more direct home office moron alert.

While not up there with the New Coke Old Coke mess, it is a pretty interesting lesson in how the front office, you, often gets completely disconnected with what actually is going on and what actually matters to people on both sides of your counter.

So, boys and girls, Mickey says the lesson for today is: Pay attention to what really matters when it comes to your employees and guests.  You’re likely to be amazed at what you find.

Memo to Seth: They have really really clean fire trucks  at Disney World.

Comments

[yeah her]

oh man...I only had to get to "It's been" to realize that this was a past tense reference to one of the best things about hanging around disney world...the best? Epcot center...walking around the different "countries" it was always really neat to see those different hometowns and have a reasonable way to open a conversation with someone...maybe learn something new about a different culture. Cruise ships still do it (last time I checked), I wonder what made the guys/gals in the corner offices think that they were making a wise decision here. Sounds expensive and certainly didn't achieve the "oh yeah, the happiest place on earth! I needed another spot for my eyes to remember that's where I am!" effect they were probably hoping for. Yikes...

[Stuart MacDonald]

Having spent a whack 'o time with Mouse People over the years, I can totally see why this happened (btw there's a well known travel industry saying: "You Don't F*** With The Mouse." Moving on...). So, why? The root cause is that these "Celebration" promos work. Big time. Ever notice how pretty much every year Disney has a heavily promoted "X Anniversary of Y" or some such thing? This is not coincidental. Research has shown that people love the "join the party -- don't miss out!" idea, and it has the handy (and intended) side effect of creating a shiny new PR/promotional angle to talk up. And *nobody* does PR like the Mouse. In this case, my guess is that in their zeal to immerse park goers in the Joyful Celebration Of Whatever They Came Up With This Time (tm) they swapped in new badges, and somebody just made a poorly thought through call on the re-dos. What's even more surprising though, given the in-park buzz you say this is creating and given their ninja PR skills, is that they didn't replace them again right away. Could be saying that there's more to it (e.g. complaints from some staff about being harrased or getting negative comments based on their hometowns or some such, leading to a change in the policy).

M-I-C... you later.

- Stuart

[Jim Courtney]

Simon Cooper, a (now Marriott, former Delta) hotel executive whom I met through a couple of MBA alumni events, would give talks on managing in the hospitality industry. When asked "What was his biggest fear and frustration?", he would respond that it was the fact his lowest paid employees were the one most in contact with the customers. When I used to stay at Delta Hotels in my travels it often showed up in the way I was (respectfully) treated whenever I raised an issue; everything from an immediate response to free meals, and even once a free night, in the hotel. By the way, he made sure those lowest paid employees were empowered to make these decisions.