Thoughts about the recent withdrawal of Halloween Horrors from Wildlife Reserves Singapore

This is one good case study for the rest of us who are learning about managing the social media.

While there could have been many reasons for the CEO to remove this event at the very last minute, this is simply a move which is too drastic to make especially when people are able to air their thoughts and reasonings on the social media which are many times more valid than the CEO’s reasons.

What’s done is already done.  But it’s the aftermath of handling the social media that matters today.

So far as I can see, they have been trying to do some cleaning up of the “mess” by finishing the unfinished work, doing some FAQs for the public, CEO giving some explanation, keeping the comments as intact as possible while removing vulgarities, CEO posting on the wall to apologise and taking full responsibilities, and lastly to focus on business continuity with the rest of the wall posts.

It is a very difficult task to handle the huge amount of negative comments which keep flowing in.  Not to ignore any of them and continue to allow the social media users to vent their anger, it is a wise choice to make as it requires a lot of thoughts and a plan to clean up the mess.  The idea is not to agitate anybody.  No amount of words can ever be sufficient to have a good reason to convince anyone why they are withdrawing an activity which costs the company a million dollar of expenses and refunding around 1000 tickets.  Seriously speaking from both the business point of view, and from the public of this highly-anticipated event.

I think they have done everything that they need in this social media crisis.  Only time can heal the rest now.