Marketing In The News: Disney Holiday Marketing

As a kid I grew up watching Disney channel every day before school. It was something I constantly looked forward to. At the same time I always remember thinking to myself "why are there so many commercials?". Even at a young age I was recognizing the amount of time it took to get through all of the ads so I was able to watch my show again.  Now looking back, I'm realizing that I never wondered why those commercials were even there in the first place. While researching for this blog post I came across an article that caught my attention. The article is titled "How Disney is helping brands extend Halloween momentum into the holidays". I was extremely interested in this article as soon as I read the word "Disney" because I knew that Disney is one of the top powerhouses for marketing and they seem like a good place to start. 

The main topic of this article is holiday advertising in the television and streaming world, using Disney as the main example. Some of the sub-topics of the article are the new approaches towards holiday season (specifically talking about halloween), and also how marketers are using new trends for advertising. The article talks a lot about how Disney is continuing to bring in a ton of brands and sponsors in order to expand their own brand and advertise the holidays. Some of the main sponsors that are mentioned are Hulu, Freeform, FX and The Hershey Company. Towards the end of the article Chris Kelly mentions the fact that many sponsors and brands are starting to sign multi-year contracts around "tent pole event programming". 

Disney as a brand has always had the value proposition to "always deliver the most exceptional entertainment experiences for people of all ages" and as time has gone by they have done an amazing job at staying afloat as entertainment and media has been constantly changing. I think that in the years to come we will start to see that value proposition start to slightly shift towards also including capitalizing on the growth of other companies in order to continue to innovate and stay relevant. 

The simple relevance of this article is the fact that it's talking about the holiday season and it ties in to the fact that starting in August stores were already promoting halloween. On the more complicated side, this article really focuses on the streaming world and the shifts towards multi-year contracts rather than random and brief sponsorships. This article mentions that Disney has over 30 sponsorships including Hulu and Freeform's halloween programming being the most relevant. On Hulu in itself their program titled "Huluween" has brought in around 3 billion streaming hours. This shows that a huge aspect of marketing is promotion and using other companies that might have a unique niche in order to bring in huge numbers. 

The main challenge that Disney had to overcome was the vast shift towards streaming rather than live tv and tv channels. To combat this challenge Disney created "Disney Plus" and also bought many other companies that had their own streaming platforms. Currently the streaming issue isn't a big deal because Disney already capitalized on it but going back to the article, the new thing they are tackling is the innovations in the advertising business and keeping up with the ever expanding holiday seasons. Another really important thing to note is the fact that Disney recently saw its stock hit its lowest in 9 years. As a result of this they are becoming more creative in their marketing tactics.

I think the uniqueness of this article stems from the idea of creating long term contracts with other brands for the holiday season. As mentioned in the article, the only times we've really seen multi-year contracts has been around sports which shows the fact that this is a really new and innovative idea. 

I believe that the majority of the marketing solution is really good and has the potential to do a ton of great things for the company. The only thing that worries me is the fact that Disneys stock price is historically low right now and a lot of their new marketing ideas involve a lot of other companies. This could really boost the other companies and leave Disney in the same place they are starting at because the brands that will catch the publics attention are Hulu and the other streaming platforms. A solution that I thought of was to still use these other sponsors in order to continue to pull billions of streams but in addition to that, I think it would be beneficial to really promote the Disney name in order to bring peoples attention back and increase their stock price. 

From this assignment I have learned a ton about the ins and outs of marketing/advertising in the context of the massive company which is Disney. Specifically I learned about how they are trying to extend the momentum of the holidays in order to maintain their relevancy and at the same time build up a ton of other companies. 

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/disney-brands-halloween-holiday-marketing-trends/695515/