Huge Toy Story 4 Marketing Push for Disney
Pssst. Here’s a secret. Toy Story 4 is out… Ha, I know. Not much of a mystery. Anticipation for the return of the Toy Story gang is currently at a fever pitch. And much of that frenzy can be attributed to the Toy Story 4 Marketing team.
How Disney Marketing Backed Toy Story 4
Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro explained:
When it comes to Disney churning out a $1 billion global grossing film at the box office, some may think that the studio’s brands of Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm simply do all the lifting. Slap Marvel on any deeper universe title like Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange, and moviegoers just show up, right?
However, much of Disney’s success can be attributed to the studio’s power to event-ize their titles.
And we’re not just talking about the spoils of a vertically integrated company, i.e racking record views for Frozen 2 and Avengers: Infinity War trailers via the studio’s deep arteries of social media and online channels, movie banners in their theme parks or Disney Channel integrated spots. In a media landscape where various platforms of entertainment i.e. TV, mobile, theaters are competing for the consumer’s attention, Disney excels at raising the profile of its movies by continually pairing them with notable advertisers, thus energizing varying demos of moviegoers in ways that an online movie trailer may not. Promoting everywhere and anywhere there is daylight touching the Earth is the Disney means of winning at the theatrical box office.
As D’Alessandro wrote, “the results speak for themselves.”
And as Toy Story 4 looks to dominate this weekend’s box office, there are several critical components to the film’s promotional campaign, including:
An Automobile Partner
Given the camping and RV elements in Toy Story 4 (Bonnie the girl who now owns Woody, Buzz and the gang goes RVing with her family in the movie), Disney chose to align with Chrysler again after Incredibles 2 and Go RVing, a coalition of RV manufacturers, dealers and campgrounds which helps consumers plan their mobile camping trips.
An Airline Partner
[T]his time around the studio worked with Alaska Airlines which featured a newly-themed plane featuring the Toy Story 4 lead characters on flights heading to the Disneyland Resort and to the 116 destinations that they serve from the West Coast.
Check MickeyBlog.com’s story about the plane.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s Toy Story 4 partnership touts ten toys which customers can collect and four different types of Happy Meals which kids can use to build a carnival background or a cardboard RV. Each Happy Meal toy bag carries a ticket that can be scanned in the McDonald’s App for exclusive content.
Deadline went into even more detail, so be sure to check out the full article.
So, beyond being part of one of the most beloved film franchises of all time; Toy Story comes to theaters with a massive amount of marketing behind it. Tom Hanks may have joked about Disney’s well-oiled marketing team. But that marketing effort works. And we’ll know how well it works on Monday when the numbers for the opening weekend are announced!
Simple questions this time: Are you going to see Toy Story 4 this weekend?