Disney Pushes 'Alice' Through The Mobile Looking Glass

Alice In Wonderland/mobile

Walt Disney Pictures is taking mobile users through the looking glass with its new campaign promoting the March 5 release of "Alice in Wonderland." The mobile effort behind Tim Burton's 3D update of the Disney classic features games, digital greeting cards and video packaged in motion-sensitive ads.

Created with Starcom USA, the campaign has kicked off with ads running in popular applications and games for the iPhone and the iPod touch including "Word Warp" and "Paper Toss." Clicking on the ads allows mobile users to watch the full "Alice" movie trailer or play the "Queen's Match-Up Game" in which the object is to match character images into pairs.

Through the ads, people can also send mobile greeting cards to friends, featuring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen and other characters. And in a twist on the "shakable" iPhone ad made famous by Dockers, the unit employs Apple's accelerometer technology to let users "spin" their phones (on a flat surface) to simulate "falling" down the rabbit hole with Alice.

The iPhone ads, running through March 6, are being served through a trio of mobile ad networks: Greystripe, Millennial Media and Quattro Wireless.

Disney has separately released a free, stand-alone "Alice" app in the App Store, plugging both the movie and an upcoming game based on the film for the Nintendo Wii. It comes with an "Alice" trailer, related wallpapers and a series of movie-themed puzzles.

The iPhone-centric mobile push behind the movie may be nothing, however, compared to the plans Disney has for offering content through the forthcoming iPad. Speaking to analysts this week, Disney CEO Robert Iger gushed enthusiasm for the Apple tablet, calling it a "gamechanger" for creating new kinds of content.

"Obviously, it will be a great device to play games on and to watch videos, because of the quality of the screen, but the interactivity that it will allow on a portable device with such a high-quality screen is going to enable us to really start developing product that is different than the product that you typically see on an Internet-connected computer or on a television set," he said.

Sounds like Iger's gone down the rabbit hole himself. In the works are iPad companions to the Disney's digital books app, the ABC News app, Marvel apps and others.

3 comments about "Disney Pushes 'Alice' Through The Mobile Looking Glass".
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  1. Elizabeth Rhys from KTS, February 12, 2010 at 8:28 a.m.

    So they did this for iPhone. What about the Droid?

  2. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, February 12, 2010 at 9:28 a.m.

    What about the millions and millions of people who do not have an iPhone or an iPad? It's not like a choice between flavors. All of those and their families who cannot afford those devises and the monthly plans, too bad you lose? It could backfire.

  3. Jeff Bach from Quietwater Media, February 12, 2010 at 9:40 a.m.

    My assumption is that the Droid is a "phone family" and not just one single phone. If I am wrong and Droid IS one single phone, then go up one more level and think "all non-iphone phones".

    So when I see Droid, I see numerous screen sizes, different phone form factors, different OSes, different version of those same OSes, and varied sets of hardware features.

    I think the variety encountered in the Droid family is going to be one of those issues where consumers might love the variety, but creators are going to dislike supporting so many different versions of their content, with each one fitting "x" and nothing else.

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