Creating Magical Experiences

Disney Parks Social Media Content: Creating Magical Experiences
Thomas Smith (@ThomasSmith) is Social Media Director at Disney Destinations

It was obvious from the start of the presentation that Disney has a significant social media presence.  On Facebook alone, their properties have over 381 million fans.  They monitor (using Radian 6) and respond on their social media properties 24/7.  The Disney Parks blog is the hub of their social media strategy, and everything else is a spoke out from that central location.

The mission of the blog and social media focus is no different than the vision Walt Disney had for his theme parks – “A place for people to find happiness and knowledge.”  Their strategy is driven by the following goals:

• Humanize Disney
• Purposeful Storytelling
• Remarkable Experiences
• Curiosity = Ideas (Ask what if? and why not?)

They prioritize the blog the same way they do any of their other properties, and as Smith said, “We look at every day like a new ‘show’ on the blog,” and, utilizing a network of more than 75 bloggers and content contributors from across the company they prepare a lot of content on a daily basis.  This network of bloggers and contributors ranges from the CEO to managers in multiple departments throughout the company.  Their content strategy is made up of the following:

Getting Your Breakthrough Idea Approved

Presenters: Fara Howard – Exec. Dir. Global Site Design, Dell, Andrew Runyon – Disney, John Ellett – nFusion, Nicole Cochran – Chili’s
3 Key Criteria
1. Clearly define the business objective

Fatal flaws – Overpromising and underdelivering – technology often comes with glitches

Fara Howard – internal agency at Dell – getting to yes from internal clients

3 criteria for getting an idea approved

1. Tie your work to business rationale and priorities – Speak in their language. Remember work needs to pay back to the P&L. Listen closely in meetings and rearticulate their objectives, not yours
2. Provide customer – not personal – insight – Remove “I think” from your vernacular – show customers insights and use
3. Be consistent in the design guiding principles and speak about them often – write them down build them with the client and ensure you are aligned

– Be patient – often the innovation comes in stages – present your work as such.
– Pre-wire – Knowing your client allies and share the work with them first.

Common fatal flaw that causes a rejection – Not incorporating client and customer feedback into the big ideas
Problems – not listening to customer feedback
– not asking clarifying questions – eg assuming

Success story: Next generation Dell.com
Business need – simplify customer dell.com consumer create a globally scalable site structure
Goal – incorporate compelling product and branding into the site to drive higher brand affinity
Challenge – Receptivity to rich content and branding was high at project start, but transactional needs started to trump branding

Andrew Runyon – Disney
Two different perspective
Internally (client side) – budget withstanding, no good idea is rejected
Externally (vendor/agency) – What are we really looking for and how could your idea be better.

Internal Perspective – client side
4 key marketing objectives/criteria
Reach – encouage widespread sampling of our product to drive anticipation toward opening weekend
Recognize a marketing averse target – Provide value, use marketing as story telling, introduce characters and expand film fiction
Measurability – Ability to prove purchase conversion, opportunity for data-collection, demonstration of ROI, and contributiontowards awareness/intent
Media Agnostic – creating and idea that is complimentary to rest of film campaign, doesn’t live in a vacuum, and amplifies trad efforts by giving them “social legs.”
Optimized for social – Integrates the social graph/social design into our initiatives – Organize people around social platforms – strngthen our movie assets within the social graph – opitimize all Disney-owned propoerties to utlize social platforms
Word of mouth is second biggest reason people go to see a movie – so social is crucial

Case Study – “Tickets Together”

In partnership with Digisynd (internal social communcations division of Disney we were able to solve a fundamental marketing challenge
Challenge: In celebration of theme of friendship in Toy Story 3, we wanted to creat an innovative and immersive destination that could successfully bridge the social experience of toing to the movies with the capabilities of social networking.
Experience: Disney Tickets Together – Facebook’s first in-site movie ticket purchase application allows fans to view movie times at their local theatre, create viewing events, invite their friends, and buy tickets via Fandango and movietickets.com. In the end, no friend got left behind
Results: 64 million unique readers – could actually measure the purchase process.
External Perspective – Vendor/Agency Side – Fundamental understand of marketing objectives should guide your process of ideation to deliver more on-target ideas
– Know our business – simply put – Get butts in seats
Understand the Disney Brand vs specific Disney projects
– Unique brand equity relative to other Studio competitors
Ask for information. Don’t take an intro meeting without having an idea
Never been done before – what would you and your org like to do that you’ve never been able to? In casy you haven’t heard, as Disney “We make magic.”