Entertainment Marketer of the Year: Walt Disney

Once upon a time, in a land where marketers seek to turn ad campaigns into cultural phenomena, there lived a major brand known as The Walt Disney Co.

That's the start of a familiar story. But in this telling, the iconic company unleashes cross-platform marketing forces and merchandising efforts that seemed nothing short of magic.

The biggest, brightest star in this kingdom is "High School Musical 2," which in August drew a record number of cable viewers to its premiere. The studio built on that popularity: Live shows helped pull visitors to Disney's parks, building on the original TV movie that attracted 170 million viewers worldwide. Apple sold the original version on iTunes, one of the first digital movies consumers could download from its Web site. That attracted media attention and consumer dollars.

"The stars aligned for Disney on this campaign, because the target audience was perfect," says Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer. "When the movie came out, Apple had just begun pushing video content on iTunes, so the first "High School Musical" benefited from the spike in interest of the ability to download digital video content from the Internet."

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"HSM 2" premiered on the Disney Channel, with exclusive premiere sponsors, such as Wal-Mart, Dannon, Hasbro and Honda. It delivered 17.2 million total viewers, the most for any cable telecast in history, according to Nielsen Media Research. One out of every 10 people and 4 out of every 10 kids ages 6 to 11 watched it.

"'High School Musical' is a great example of how we've leveraged a Disney Channel Original Movie that our audience loved from the start to become a franchise the whole company could get behind," says Adam Sanderson, senior vice president/brand marketing for the Disney-ABC Cable Networks Group.

From consumer products to live events, "HSM" became nothing short of a phenomenon. As of November, "HSM 2" had reached 124 million viewers worldwide. Since its premiere, "HSM" has been seen by more than 250 million unique viewers worldwide.

An extensive campaign on Disney.com preceded the movie's release, complete with stand-alone video and music channels built on Disney's XD (extreme digital) platform. Beginning on Sunday of the week leading up to the premiere, Disney's internal site tracking reported a record average of 7.6 million daily page views at Disney.com/dxd, which debuted in February. Over the weekend, Disney saw an average of 8 million daily page views.

The "HSM"-themed show running at Disney's parks was redesigned to coincide with the premiere of "HSM 2," incorporating music and dance from both movies. The show has hit the live stage, too. By licensing the script for local student theatre productions, Disney saw "High School Musical: On Stage" performed about 8,000 times since fall 2006.

The sequel's soundtrack, released in August, is expected to be the No. 1 album of 2007 on the Billboard Top 200, with more than 5 million units shipped by the end of November.

Another successful tale this year: the marketing and the advertising campaigns for "Ratatouille." Long before the movie's release in June, Disney and its Pixar Animation Studios division began running trailers attached to box office hits such as "Cars," and introduced an all-day TV advertising campaign that included a 90-second spot on "American Idol." It drove viewers to a nine-minute movie clip that gave a glimpse into the story line and a lesson in how to pronounce the title.

As the release date grew nearer, Disney added the scratch-and-sniff book, I Smell a Rat, published by Random House, and a 10-city tour.

And, of course, the year provided an animated fairy-tale princess who gets transported out of her happy-ever-after-land into the wicked world of live-action Manhattan. Disney marketed the musical fairy tale "Enchanted" with a rich MySpace profile, complete with videos, podcasts, celebrity tie-ins, and the chance for users to turn photos of themselves into Disney characters.

All that gave Disney something to be thankful for during the Thanksgiving holiday. The movie topped the five-day weekend box office, grossing $50 million, $35 million of which came in Friday through Sunday--a fairy-tale ending to already charmed year.

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