Disney and Marketing: Normal Marketing Strategies

 Normal Marketing Strategies

Merchandise

The many (many) theme park stores that sell Disney merchandise had “Jungle Book” sections. 

Synergy

When two companies of almost no relation work together to help market each others product. Examples of this for Disney are:

Kenzo: The fashion retailer created a limited-edition line of clothing inspired by the movie and its classic characters. https://www.kenzo.com/en/thejunglebook 

Airbnb: Ran a promotion offering $100 off treehouses listed on the service that was supported by a co-branded TV spot including footage from the movie.

Cross Media Convergence

This strategy of cross-media convergence has become a basis for the Walt Disney Company’s rapid growth. Some examples include re-releasing on DVD but through tie ins with other companies – McDonalds had Jungle Book 2 Happy Meals, for example, which in turn promoted the first film. Also Disney licensed the characters for use by other companies, such as Virgin who developed a Jungle Book video game for Sega, Gameboy and PC in the early 1990s. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtIvuHMekXE - an advert showing CMC and synergy with Mc Donald's and the Jungle Book 2.

Posters

A method used by all film companies including Disney for marketing is of course movie posters.









Pull Marketing

Stars are another way to make adults pay attention. To elevate “The Jungle Book” in the minds of grown-ups, Disney in March circulated dramatic photographs that paired voice actors with their onscreen characters — Idris Elba with the tiger Shere Khan, Ben Kingsley with the panther Bagheera, Lupita Nyong’o with the wolf Raksha.

Marketing Via Technology

When animals talk in a movie, unless it’s a comedy, older moviegoers tend to skip it. Most of Mr. Favreau’s animals are not cartoonish and cuddly (not by a long shot), but Disney could not rely on trailers and TV spots to convey that message.

So Disney used bloggers and entertainment news sites to hammer home a point: Favreau used sophisticated filmmaking techniques to create the animal characters.

Disney TV Use and Theme Parks

Various corners of the Disney empire pitched in to promote “The Jungle Book.” A New Year’s Day stunt on the Disney Channel, for instance, was used to portray the film as one of the year’s first blockbuster offerings for families and children.

But the synergistic heavy lifting was done by Disney theme parks. During the jam-packed spring break weeks, park theaters in Florida and California offered sneak-peek footage of the movie, with Jon Favreau often providing introductions to the movie. 

Social Media

Apart from traditional marketing devices (theatrical trailers and print-based posters) Disney uploaded an interactive movie poster on Snapchat and users could apply a framed ‘Jungle Book’ lens, which turned their faces into the snake, Kaa.

The Instagram feed, twitter and Facebook feeds were all instrumental in drumming up millennial support. 

Intertextuality

An example of intertextuality, other media works are being referenced within Jungle Book 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=100&v=m125-V2uCBw

Disney and Marketing: 360 Degree, Involving Everyone

360 Degree Marketing

360 degree marketing is when marketing aims to include everyone. This includes old and young, different races and fans of different genres. Disney used this strategy to market Jungle Book 2016.

Disney Fans

For the most part it is safe for Disney to assume that their fans will already want to watch their movies, but just in case they still use things such as Disney Expo's to market movies like JB16. 

This allows Disney to make sure their own fans are interested in the movie.

Teenagers

In part to make “The Jungle Book” appeal to a finicky high school crowd — older siblings tend to influence younger brothers and sisters — Disney packed the first trailer with scary moments (pouncing panther, snarling tiger, stampeding buffalo) while hiding the musical numbers and keeping Baloo’s goofier moments to a minimum.

Hispanic

Studio marketers have learned that Hispanic moviegoers tend to buy tickets in particularly large groups; if you hook one family member, you can get an exponential result. To achieve that goal, Disney teamed with Univision (the largest Hispanic American channel) for a five-week stunt that brought “Jungle Book” characters and clips to telenovelas, talk shows and sports coverage. Disney even built a tool to allow Univision personalities to appear in scenes.

Men

Generally speaking, women and girls see Disney’s magic castle logo on a trailer and are pulled closer. The opposite can be true with men. So Disney aggressively and repeatedly pitched “The Jungle Book” to male audiences.

Commercials on ESPN portrayed the movie as coming not from the studio that made “Cinderella” but “from the studio that brought you ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’” An extended 3-D trailer for “The Jungle Book” was attached to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which had an audience that was 58 percent male.

And Disney rolled out an action-oriented trailer during the Super Bowl.

The Jungle Book - Distribution

Distribution

Age Ratings

The Jungle Book 1967 - U Rating

The Jungle Book 2016 - PG Rating

Who distributed the films?

Both movies were distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, called Buena Vista Distribution at the time JB67 was distributed. 

Release Dates

The Jungle Book 1967 - 18th October 1967

The Jungle Book 2016 - 15th April 2016

Marketing and Distrubution

Marketing and Distribution

Distribution

• The distributor chooses which film to distribute, often seeing the film at a film festival. This is common for independent movies.
• They decide on the number of digital copies and pay for each.
• Negotiate the release date and site of exhibition.
• Agree on budget and sequence a campaign across a range of online, audio-visual and print platforms.
• Online platforms include a website as central marketing hub with convergent links to travelers on YouTube and other social networking platforms.

Digital Distrubution

Towards the end of 2005, the UK distribution and exhibition sectors were starting to move towards digital distribution and exhibition. 

Digital technology is seen to offer a more cost effective and logistics-light alternative to the tried and trusted, but unyielding model of 35mm print distribution. 

The Jungle Book: Research Task

Differences in Production Between JB and JB16

The Jungle Book (1967) at one point was completely scrapped and then recreated. This happend as Walt Disney believed the original script and ideas of the movie to be far too dark and not in line with the family friendly and happy vision he had for the film. So almost an entirely new crew was brought in to help Walt Disney create his film.

The music and songs were the first things to be created which is also how Marry Poppins was made. This was considered to be part of the Disney method.

Some characters were cut from The Jungle Book. These characters being Rocky the Rhino and Ticker the Tickworm. Walt Disney however believed that having these characters would make the film feel more cluttered and have too many events and so they were cut out of The Jungle Book while it was still in its development stage.

The Jungle Book 2016 did not have the problem of writing songs or creating characters as all of that had already been done from the original production of the original movie. However JB16 did have to redesign some of the characters to fit within the live-action world. JB16 set out to be a darker movie to distinguish itself from the original but there were no complete rewrites and recreations of the movie.

Both movies required high tech technologies for their respective times. JB was an animated movie so high tech was needed and JB16 had heavy use and reliance on CGI.

Technology Used on the 1967 Production

In the production of The Jungle Book the main piece of technology used was the Multi-plane camera. A Multi-plane camera splits the field of view into different planes or levels. Separate planes are used for the foreground, middle ground and background.

Operating the Multi-plane camera required several technicians to adjust the numerous lights, cel-setups and plane positions for every single shot. Each shot also required many tests in order to establish the desired perspective, proportion, and timing of the scene.

Technology Used on the 2016 Production

For the 2016 remake of The Jungle Book CGI (computer generated imagery) was used to create both the animal characters and the world in which events took place. This was partly to give to movie a sort of magical feel despite its darker tone.

Jon Favreau (director): It was never going to be animated. But the idea of going to the jungle with a kid and no real animals and all the environments we'd have to replace, seemed like it was going to be scary. [Disney Chairman] Alan Horn started talking about films like "Life of Pi" and "Avatar" … the idea of building a whole world with this new technology, having seen films like "Gravity" and "Planet of the Apes," got me excited.

The Jungle Book 1967 - Critic Reception

Jungle Book 1967 is rated quite highly with both critics and audiences. It is considered to be a fun and family friendly movie. 

Some have complained that the movie is too violent for younger audiences but this is a very small minority.

The Jungle Book 2016 - Critic Reception

The Jungle Book 2016 has far higher ratings than the 1967 adaptation in from both critics and audiences.

This film even has a 95% rating from rotten tomatoes. 

The movie is praised for its high tech CGI and for being wonderful to look at.

Recreating and Rewriting The Jungle Book

Recreating and Rewriting The Jungle Book 1967

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/04/18/the-jungle-book-the-making-of-

disneys-most-troubled-film/ 

A lot was riding on the company’s 19th animated feature. In 1961, 101 Dalmations had 

been a huge box-office success, but the next film, The Sword in the Stone (1963), was 

not. Disney himself was concerned at this dip. As his company had diversified in the 

Fifties – into theme parks, television series, live-action films – he’d become less hands on with the feature animations. But after the commercial disappointment of The Sword in the Stone, he resolved to keep a close eye on the next big-screen cartoon.

Disney had already OK’d an idea from Bill Peet, one of his long-standing animators and storymen, for an adaptation of Kipling’s book – he’d told the company’s all-powerful founder that the British author’s Raj-era tales offered a wealth of potential for Disney-friendly animal characters. But according to Sibley, when the boss came to read the script, “what he found was that the team headed up by Bill Peet had come up with quite a sombre, dark, serious story – much more serious than any films they’d done in animation since the days of Pinocchio”. An “alarmed” Disney had “a bit of a confrontation with Bill Peet”. The original story was junked and Peet duly left the studio in 1964.

Ever the perfectionist, Disney went back to scratch. He called in another vintage Disney storyman, Larry Clemmons, and a new team of creatives. His opening gambit was “to give a copy of Kipling’s book to Larry and his colleagues”, says Sibley. “Disney said, ‘the first thing I want you to do is not to read it!’ And they started working with the characters that Peet had created in his original treatment, but creating a much more upbeat, lively, freer, light-in-mood film.” Another casualty of this restart was the original score by songwriter Terry Gilkyson.

This was part of the Disney method: have the songs written very early in the film-making process. Says Sibley, “In Mary Poppins, for example, nearly all of the songs we now know were set down long before the final script was ever arrived at. They were decided upon as key points in the movie, around which the rest of the story would be fitted in.”

Only one of Gilkyson’s songs survived the cull: the Oscar-nominated The Bare Necessities. To fill the musical void, Disney called in the Sherman Brothers, Richard and Robert. They had worked for the Disney company since 1958, but had hit musical pay dirt with their songs for 1964’s Mary Poppins. That soundtrack won the Shermans two Academy Awards, and with Feed the Birds they created Disney’s personal favourite song.

The Jungle Book: Differences Between Original and Remake

Industry Differences

The Jungle Book

It was thought that the first version of this script was too dark therefore it was re-written.​

The overall budget for this movie was 4 million. 

Larry Clemmons, the film’s  scriptwriter, was given a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s novel but was told that ‘The first thing I want you to do is not to read it’.
 ​

Phil Harris was cast as in the role as Baloo.

This movie has now made 205 million worldwide. ​

This was the final film Disney worked on before his death. 

The Jungle Book 2016

Sean Bailey, president of production for Disney, called it ‘one of the most technologically advanced 


movies ever made’





All the animals and landscapes etc were created on computers, mostly by the British digital effects 


house MPC.​



Cost an estimated $175m to produce.

Bill Murray was cast in the role Baloo​.
 

Cost an estimated $175m to produce.

Planned by Walt Disney Studios Chairman, Alan Horn.​


Scarlett Johansson was cast in this  film.





Warner Brothers had been producing their own adaptation of Kipling’s The Jungle Book at the same 



time.

Why Remake a Classic?

Why Remake a Classic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To-gg1rIDfo - Video clip

• Characters and plots already exist.
• Already fans and fan bases.
• Reducing risk.
• Making old rides relevant again in Disney Land. Synergy.
• Have to create less ideas as the ideas already exist.
• Own so much they can constantly make remakes.
• Allows merchandise to be sold again.

What the Director of The Jungle Book 2016 has to Say.

Favreau said that he was motivated by Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn to take the technological route for the film.

"The idea of going out to the jungle and shooting this, it just felt like it wouldn't have the magic that the 1967 film had had. There was a dreamlike quality to it. There was a surreal quality to it. It was a high-water mark for character animation and to me, that's what I remember about it. And so I wanted to make sure we preserved that.

"But what Horn said was: look at the technology. Look at 'Life of Pi', 'Avatar'. Why not use the technology to create a whole world that transports you? Let's really embrace this new technology and see what we can do if we push its limit."

Favreau also presented a glimpse of his vision by screening portions of the film.

The director explained that by re-imagining the film "you are serving many masters...you are trying to honour the memory, preconceived memory of people who grew up with it, but you are also trying to make a movie that appeals to the full audience -- that is ethically what we set out to do".

"We are trying to pay tribute, and we can also see that with the visual effects, we are pushing the technology. We are mixing the old story with cutting edge technology," he added.

So, how was the film made?

"We went back to the structure of it and saw what Kipling did because he offered a lot. We kind of picked between the two. The story structure of the 1967 film was good and offered a lot; so I stuck to it as much as I could. What I have tried to do is to focus on the images that I remember from it before going back to look at it again," he said.

He is brimming with joy after using "level of artistry and technology" to narrate a story with "humour and emotion, and showing nature, animals, and getting into that real deep mythic imagery that I think always marries well with technology, and always has."

Failure of the Warner Brothers Remake.

In the battle between the two “Jungle Book” movies, Disney appears to have the upper hand.

The studio just enjoyed a massive $103.6 million opening weekend for its live-action update of its 1967 animated classic and is already hard at work on a sequel that would bring back director Jon 

Favreau and focus on more of Mowgli’s adventures. Warner Bros. won’t counter with its own version of the Rudyard Kipling tales until 2018, 30 months after the Disney version took multiplexes by storm.

“Warner Bros. has to be really concerned,” said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “It could spell disaster.”

The history of competing studio projects with similar story lines is nearly as old as the movie business itself.

“There’s always a perception issue where if audiences feel like two movies are very similar, it can be problematic,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore.

Warner Bros. has just started production on its version of the Kipling stories, but analysts say that the studio will be certain that its take is sufficiently different from what Disney and Favreau achieved with their telling of the man cub fable. It has tapped Andy Serkis, the motion-capture master behind “The Lord of the Rings'” Gollum, to direct and has assembled a top-shelf cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and Benedict Cumberbatch. Though Favreau was hailed by critics for making his version of “The Jungle Book” more realistic and less carbonated than the animated rendition, Warner Bros. could get darker still as a way of setting itself apart. That might mean reaching for older audiences by upping the action and getting a PG-13 rating.

“It’s all about the message,” said Dergarabedian. “Within the marketing they have to show there’s sufficient differentiation.”

Originally, the film was supposed to come out in October of 2017, but earlier this month Warner Bros. pushed the release date back by a year. The added time could help “Jungle Book” at the box office, giving it breathing room from the Disney version.

Over the longterm, however, Disney’s success with fairy tales may start scaring off other studios. Along with “The Jungle Book,” the company has revitalized familiar stories such as “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” “Cinderella,” “Maleficent” and “Alice in Wonderland” to an average box office return of $700 million globally. With new versions of “Dumbo” and “Beauty and the Beast” on the horizon, as well as a return to Wonderland with this summer’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” the studio may have a monopoly on stories that end in happily ever after.

“We’re seeing story extensions and many of these movies are delving deeper into these worlds,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s distribution chief. “There’s just something in the Disney DNA that allows us to have this kind of a success ratio.”

Now the pressure’s on for Warner Bros.’ “Jungle Book” to make like Watson and Crick and discover its own double helix structure.