Sorry Disney, you’re dropping the ball.
Hassan S. Ali


Dec 10, 2015·5 min read
As a proven skilled on advertising movies that feature cute, extremely merchandisable critters, I’m disappointed that no one from Disney requested me to do the same for Star Wars: The Drive Awakens and its adorable droids.

As a result of for all the advertising surrounding the film, I can still determine Quite a few alternatives for branding and promotion which have gone missed, probably to the detriment of box office revenues.

Now, I’ll give Disney’s marketing staff credit score for arranging a sparse handful of partnerships with Fiat Chrysler, Basic Mills, Campbell’s Soup, Kraft, Walmart, HP, Toys R Us, Duracell, Sphero, Lego, Unicef, Air Hogs, Monopoly, Espresso-Mate, Duck Tape, Cornhole units, Covergirl, Subway, Verizon, Google, Target, EA Games, the NBA, Playstation 4, Ample Hills ice cream, ESPN, gummy vitamins, Kay Jewelers, a $28,500 Devon watch, Nerf, Furby, Pottery Barn Youngsters, American Tourister luggage, Waze navigation, and quite a few books.

And, true, there’s additionally the Star Wars merchandise licensed underneath Disney’s Client Products division, including toy lightsabers, action figures, t-shirts, pajamas, bedsheets, shower curtains, costumes, towels, toasters, lightsaber barbecue tongs, chopping boards, salt/pepper shakers, and different products which might be estimated to net the studio $5 billion by subsequent yr.


So yes, I’ll give them that.
But… any marketer worth their weight in chambray shirts can spot all the alternatives that the studio glaringly missed right here.

As such, I’ve identified some tactics the Star Wars advertising and marketing staff ought to be implementing to maximize the film’s success, resembling:

- Creating limited-version “Dark Side” and “Light Side” coffee blends at Starbucks.
- Partnering with Therapeutic massage Envy to create a particular “The Force” package, which is basically simply a very robust Swedish therapeutic massage.
- Turning the nice Yr blimp into the nice 12 months Millennium Falcon.
- Having every character on each ABC show (since Disney owns that community) put on Star Wars-branded apparel and masks in each single scene and, additionally, rewrite scripts to solely embody the phrases “Star Wars” in all dialogue. (In the enterprise, they name this “synergy.”)
- Having Jimmy Kimmel do a whole show dressed as X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron, with sidekick Guillermo dressed as BB-8.
- Equally, creating an all Star-Wars-themed episode of Dancing With The Stars, but renaming it something intelligent like “Dancing With The Stars… Star WARS, That's!”
- Making Daisy Ridley (who plays the Resistance fighter Rey) the official spokesperson for Daisy Bitter Cream, and having Star Wars partner with that model. (Ideally this may involve product placement, with the characters prominently consuming Daisy-brand sour cream and cottage cheese all through the movie and during vital motion scenes.)
- Partnering with elementary schools to have youngsters recite the opening title scroll from the brand new movie, instead of the Pledge Of Allegiance.
- Having director J.J. Abrams go door-to-door to personally inform people concerning the film’s launch, as Dave Itzkoff suggests.
- Encouraging all cast and crew to inform their buddies and family to go watch the film.
- Having Disney purchase the Sahara Desert and rename it Jakku, i.e. the desert planet featured in the Force Awakens.
- Having director J.J. Abrams write a Medium put up about the 10 things he did earlier than eight a.m. every day whereas filming the movie.
- Partnering with every main airline to have pilots gown up as Poe Dameron and deliver all in-flight announcements as that character.
- Doing a “takeover” of any number of antidepressant medications by making the pills look like little BB-8 droids.
- Sponsoring WWE Monday Night time Uncooked and having villain Kylo Ren square off against John Cena.
- Partnering with Medieval Times to have all of the knights battle one another with lightsabers as an alternative of swords.
- Partnering with Only for Men: Contact of Grey to create a “Touch of Gray: George Lucas Edition”
- Selling Star Wars-branded caskets that seem like Han Solo frozen in carbonite, except as an alternative of a mold of Harrison Ford, it will function a metal cast of the deceased, clearly…
- Sponsoring an episode of the Maury Povich present by which Han Solo takes a paternity check to settle rampant hypothesis about whether he's or isn’t the father of Rey and Kylo Ren. Han’s ensuing freakout would go viral and, thus, garner a TON of what we within the biz call “earned media.”
- Partnering with baby yoda tea for a special edition “Scar Wars” scar gel.
- And last however not least, partnering with the Minions franchise to incorporate a Minion character in the brand new movie. Are you able to imagine the crossover success with each Star Wars AND Minions franchises combined into one?
Granted, we can’t be 100% certain of the studio politics that may have prevented a bigger advertising effort. But one can only hope that any future Star Wars films, if they're to succeed, get the advertising push they deserve.