Social Media

[Zachary]

I'll admit that I have a personal grudge against Hersheypark's marketing department for their shitty, overly aggressive, antagonistic, sometimes outright hostile social media behavior so take my glee with that context... But boy does it feel good to see Hershey being (rightfully) raked over the coals for this absolutely insane, unhinged, totally unprompted, wildly unprofessional, profoundly shitty tweet:

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And yes, while Hershey has now deleted the response, it was, somehow, a real post they made.

This is the closest to an apology I've seen so far:

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A non-apology, no explanation for why they're randomly responding to people's posts about Dollywood, no statement beyond a response to a random person on Twitter, not even a mention of Dollywood or Dolly Parton... Insane.

 

[harry580]

too soon Hershey, too soon

 

[Zachary]

I would argue there is literally no right time for a park to go dredging through tweets about competitors (how did they ever find that tweet?!) to spite post about competitors ticket prices...

But yes, it's hard to imagine a single worse time than doing it to Dollywood right now... AND IN RESPONSE TO A POST CLEARLY ABOUT DOLLY PARTON NO LESS.

It's sorta hard for me to imagine how that response was even made without "seeing the context" and, if Hersheypark does somehow have supposed "marketing professionals" on staff that are really, honestly, truly, snarkily responding to posts they literally don't understand at all, that, alone, is plenty enough reason to gut the entire department.

Literally insane.

 

[northdetective]

not the child labor candy park

 

[harry580]

not the child labor candy park

well, wait till you find out about willy Wonka's chocolate factory and its troubles before Charlie bucket tookover /s

 

[GASM]

This would be highly inappropriate even if she were still alive. Dolly has done more for this world than most can ever even imagine, who gives a shit if Hershey’s tickets are cheaper?

 

[TheCoasterNerd]

How did we go from issuing official, professional corrections to Inside the Magic articles - to THIS?

 

[Zachary]

To be clear, this is just Hersheypark lying:

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"A reply clarifying our ticket price in another conversation was posted without seeing the context of the chain so we removed quickly to avoid any confusion or insensitivity over intent."

They were not "clarifying [their] ticket price in another conversation" and there was no "context of the chain." No one was discussing Hersheypark, their ticket price, parks in general, etc and there was no other context in the "chain." Hersheypark replied to a single tweet (not a chain, not a conversation, not a discussion) specifically and only about Dolly Parton and Dollywood with an uninvited, unprompted retort about Hersheypark's ticket price posted to contrast the Dollywood ticket pricing cited in the initial post.

Hersheypark just needs to take their lumps, say that an employee who had yet to hear the news tried to highlight Hersheypark's cheaper-than-Dollywood's ticket pricing in an ungracious way, they need to apologize profusely, say nice things about Dolly Parton, and commit to reevaluating the procedures that lead to this blunder. Lying about what happened is just lowering my opinion of their social team further (quite an accomplishment).

 

[rollercoastercoaster]

There goes my chance of ever going to Hershey. Wow.

Me when I'm in a "being as dramatic as humanly possible about everything" competition and my opponent is the average coaster enthusiast:

 

[rswashdc]

I wouldn't be surprised if this was some AI or automated programmed response that Hershey uses. Doesn't excuse it in the least either way.

 

[horsesboy]

I wouldn't be surprised if this was some AI or automated programmed response that Hershey uses. Doesn't excuse it in the least either way.

Don't think this can be explained as AI. A quick search through Hershey's past responses doesn't show similar ones. One would have to think that if this was an automated AI post thst the algorithm would have found similar post and responded similarly before this one as post about park ticket pricing can't be that strange of a thing.

 

[warfelg]

Almost feels like that “interns got the password” type excuse is coming.

 

[DE_Creative]

There goes my chance of ever going to Hershey. Wow.

see this is just performative. There are things that warrant this level of response, but this is not one of them

 

[GASM]

If I were going to allow the assholes who run Hersheypark’s social media to stop me from visiting, I would’ve stopped a long time ago.

Not that I’ve been since 2021, but not the point lol.