Disneys Marketing For "The Force Awakens":
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has reached galactic proportions: $529 million worldwide with about half of it from the U.S. and Canada alone. Besides intense nostalgia for the sci-fi series and the appearance of the beloved original cast, the film’s success has been propelled by Walt Disney Co.’s careful — and clever — marketing strategy, according to Wharton marketing professor Jehoshua Eliashberg. The company’s synergistic marketing and distribution strategies were keys to the film’s widespread impact, lessons that other companies can adopt for their own products
Disney’s playbook for this release has come full circle and was largely written by Lucasfilm alumni. Back in 2005, Disney realized they needed to raise their game when it came to these kinds of franchise movies. Dick Cook and Oren Aviv identified Lucas’ team as having the best and most relevant expertise in the field. Disney raided Lucasfilm after the last SW movie in 2005 and hired-away several of Lucas’ marketing and consumer products execs. Those execs were placed in key positions at Pixar, Feature Animation, Disney Live Action and Disney Consumer Products. The execs were instructed to adapt the Lucasfilm playbook to Disney’s culture and structure and initiate a new Franchise Management function. It took several years to build the processes, tools and culture but a lot of the cross-platform success Disney is now enjoying with Marvel and Lucasfilm is because of the work of that franchise team over the last ten years. The original group of execs are all now gone, but their contributions and work will payoff for years.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has reached galactic proportions: $529 million worldwide with about half of it from the U.S. and Canada alone. Besides intense nostalgia for the sci-fi series and the appearance of the beloved original cast, the film’s success has been propelled by Walt Disney Co.’s careful — and clever — marketing strategy, according to Wharton marketing professor Jehoshua Eliashberg. The company’s synergistic marketing and distribution strategies were keys to the film’s widespread impact, lessons that other companies can adopt for their own products
Disney’s playbook for this release has come full circle and was largely written by Lucasfilm alumni. Back in 2005, Disney realized they needed to raise their game when it came to these kinds of franchise movies. Dick Cook and Oren Aviv identified Lucas’ team as having the best and most relevant expertise in the field. Disney raided Lucasfilm after the last SW movie in 2005 and hired-away several of Lucas’ marketing and consumer products execs. Those execs were placed in key positions at Pixar, Feature Animation, Disney Live Action and Disney Consumer Products. The execs were instructed to adapt the Lucasfilm playbook to Disney’s culture and structure and initiate a new Franchise Management function. It took several years to build the processes, tools and culture but a lot of the cross-platform success Disney is now enjoying with Marvel and Lucasfilm is because of the work of that franchise team over the last ten years. The original group of execs are all now gone, but their contributions and work will payoff for years.
The marketing push was so big that it was virtually impossible not to realize a new Star Wars movie was on the way. The team at Disney has masterminded this campaign from the moment they announced the film, and have obviously been at work since they announced a deal to acquire Lucasfilm in 2012.
With video, they were relentless, both online and on television. It started with the 88 seconds of footage they first teased more than a year ago , then the longer second teaser that dropped in April, then the official trailer that debuted in October and the countless TV spots. It seemed like every few days there was a new version released with just a few seconds of exclusive never-before-seen footage. With each version, the anticipation and excitement only grew, and of course it left you wanting more, hoping for the next few seconds in a few days. The cast made the rounds on the talk show circuit and timed it all perfectly. Even the normally reluctant Harrison Ford was cooperative, and playfully so.
ertainly, there's something very special about Star Wars. It's one of the few franchises that has been experienced as a society -- Joseph calls it a rare "cultural phenomenon." Older generations may have seen the original movies in theaters, then watched them again on VHS with their children (like my father did). My generation then got to experience the films in theaters for the first time when the remastered versions released in 1997 for the 20th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment