Walt Disney Parks and Resorts will let people get in free on their birthdays next year, and I absolutely love the idea.
Disney has pioneered making its brand a behavioral experience ever since its "Snow White" pioneered the world's first avatars and artificial worlds. The theme parks were conceived as immersive virtual entertainment before we possessed the language, let alone the thinking, that was so obvious to Walt.
There are a seemingly endless number of ways for people to live the Disney vision, from plush toys and costumes, to videogames and jewelry. There is no Disney brand separate from doing something with it; nearly any moment of awareness or recognition has an action available nearby (buy, visit, watch, play, etc.). We can all recognize the characters, and perhaps smile or grimace depending on our individual tastes, but Disney is expert in operationalizing that front-end knowledge into something more, and something more profitable.
And, by doing so, its brand can be all about special and unique, almost as if Disney is itself a special occasion.
So the idea that anybody gets into a park on their birthday is simply brilliant.
Unfortunately, the marketing braintrust there has mucked up the offer with a lot of smarty-pants branding qualifiers and add-ons: there's a big campaign is called "What will you celebrate?," which involves commercials highlighting different milestones people might celebrate, and sending costumed characters to host events in 30 cities. They kicked-off the whole shebang when singer Miley Cyrus celebrated her 16th birthday at a park.
Ho hum.
I don't understand why Disney wouldn't skip all the expensive, complicated nonsense, and simply make sure that every single person knew that they could celebrate their birthday with a free park pass? In fact, I'd go further, and announce that every person deserves to celebrate something during the year, and thus everyone could get a free one-time day pass.
The thing could be metered, like frequent flier seats on airplanes, so it wouldn't become a balance-sheet buster. Maybe there are other discounts available for days when the free passes aren't available. Perhaps more tickets are available on less-visited days, so the park achieves more efficient utilization (and tangential income from selling services)?
Talk about a pitch that would be relevant and meaningful in these dicey, sad economic times of ours. The news itself would get more attention than the PR people behind Miley's party ever imagined. No starlets, no expensive road trips, no branding theme that wants people to translate and/or internalize something.
Here's the creative branding line: book your visit now. You deserve it.
The birthday pass is a smart idea, though, even if the execution is overly complicated and diffuse. It wouldn't take a dim bulb to see more opportunity here.
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