Disney’s Mobile Marketing Strategy is Genius

Disneyland is wasted on the young.

I learned that a couple of weeks ago when, for the first time in my life, I went to Disneyland and liked it. When I went, I was Brightkite-ing up a storm - keeping tabs on the rides I was going on, pictures of neat stuff, etc. The one thing I couldn’t do was placemark the individual rides I went on, because they don’t have their own individual addresses.

Now news comes that Verizon and Disney are striking a deal, where Verizon customers can have an applicaion added to their phones that will allow visitors to track where they are, wait times on rides, where Mickey is, etc.

Now THAT’S the way to do mobile marketing! Be a company that, for whatever reason, covers a large area and has a lot of foot traffic. Then make it so your walking is tied into your phone. This is why I was so keen on tracking my Disneyland trip on Brightkite, as it allowed me not only to take the same kind of tourist pictures everyone takes, but I could post them immediately and get comments from others on them in real time.

Add in the GPS-like tracking within the park, and the phone becomes a very convenient way to enjoy the park. This is what will make mobile marketing work: When you have captive foot traffic that is willing and interested in using their phone for something other than calling. It works for Verizon too, though, if they decide to turn this kind of technology into their own community, just like Brightkite.

Another idea that comes to mind are coupons that display on the phone. Instead of having the speedpass machine at the ride give you a ticket that you can loose, a phone app displays an image with your specific wait time and ride on it that you show at the gate. Then when they see that your phone is on the ride via the same proximity mapping, they “tear” your ticket and mark your phone-displayed pass as used. They can also monitor your phone to make sure you don’t sign up for a bunch of Speedpasses at once, which bogs down the system and screws it up for everyone.

written at November 13th, 2008 and is filed under Cell Phones, Marketing, News Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.