Suzi Brown, vice president of communications at Disneyland Resort, delivered the keynote address on Oct. 15 at PRSSA’s ICON 24 in Anaheim, Calif.
Brown leads the teams responsible for internal, external and executive communications, and works closely with leaders to develop executive engagement strategies and internal communications plans to engage and inform the resort’s 35,000 cast members.
Following her session, she talked with PRsay about building and maintaining a positive brand identity, enhancing trust and credibility with Disney’s large-scale audience, and navigating crises in an ever-evolving landscape.
How do you protect and promote such a storied brand like Disneyland and the Disney legacy while also keeping it fresh and relevant for today’s consumers?
I always say we’re blessed with an abundance of riches. We have so many wonderful stories to tell. Being able to connect with our guests in a personal and emotional way makes our brand a little different from everybody else’s.
And that relevance helps when we’re trying to connect. [For example, we’re] opening a Coco attraction soon. We are in Southern California, and it allows us to connect that story with a large Hispanic audience.
Can you talk about the strategies that your team has found effective in keeping Disneyland’s more than 35,000 cast members engaged, informed and aligned with the company’s goals?
With 35,000 cast members, we’re by far the largest employer in Orange County. And we know that whatever is internal is external, so we [in effect] have 35,000 brand ambassadors. It’s important that we keep them informed about what’s going on.
We’ve made an effort over the last several years that, when we have news that we’re announcing, we make sure our cast members are hearing about it at the same time that it’s going out [to the news media], so they know what’s going on and can be brand ambassadors for us.
Internal communications is a massive job. It’s not just educating and informing, but also celebrating [our employees]. And again, they can be brand ambassadors for us.
What are the key elements of an effective crisis-communication strategy, especially for a brand like Disneyland that has such high-profile public visibility?
Being able to anticipate when something might be going sideways, being as prepared as possible when it comes to internal, external, executive [communications]. All [of these forms of] communications work together and overlap.
I tell my team all the time: We write messaging that we hope never sees the light of day. But if we know that there is a chance that something can happen, [it’s] so much better to be ready for it.
So, it’s just being forward-looking, having our ear to the ground with what’s going on and trying to anticipate where we might need to respond.
There’s enough stuff that happens that you never could anticipate. But, where we can, trying to be prepared is the key.
Are there any pressing issues or emerging trends in communications — or in the hospitality industry — that you can tell us about?
A trend that has been happening now for some time is the evolution of the everyman reporter. What we find are blurred lines between traditional media and now content creators and influencers — and for us, fan sites that cover everything Disney does.
And so, we’ve evolved in meeting those groups partway, because we know that they’re going to cover us anyway, and we want to make sure that they’ve got the correct information.
But what I find frustrating at times is that fan sites or content creators won’t do the due diligence that traditional media will do to ensure that they have the correct information. And once you have misinformation out there, and people see it online and just assume that it’s accurate, it’s hard to get the genie back in the bottle. I find that we’re constantly chasing stories like that.
It’s rarely a media outlet that is misreporting; it’s something else. But then we’re having [news] media picking that up, as though it’s accurate.
I’m not sure how you solve that. I think there’s just more and more people doing that — covering us, covering [other companies and brands]. This isn’t just a Disney issue; it’s happening with brands all over the place. But it does certainly create a challenge.
In this video clip, Brown talks about brand authenticity and reaching a global audience at Disneyland:
Here, Brown shares her advice for the next generation of PR pros and communicators:
[Jim Cowsert/Grapevine Photo]
