MARKETING CAMPAIGN

SUCCESS Disney’s animated feature Frozen has taken toy retailers by storm, with UK sales of all merchandise approaching £35m.  As Disney releases stills from the new short film Frozen Fever, Anton Dominique from the London School of Marketing looks at how retail stores have capitalised on its success. The film’s success – Frozen is the biggest animated film worldwide and the fifth biggest film of all time, racking up £40m at the UK Box Office alone. The Oscar-winning movie, which was released in the US in November, has taken $1.219bn (£723m) worldwide, overtaking Iron Man 3's total haul. Frozen has become the highest-grossing animation in history.

MERCHANDISELast year the marketing executives at Disney underestimated how popular Elsa, Anna

and Olaf were going to be, with merchandise selling out in minutes worldwide.

Disney isn’t the first experience of this kind of success in the merchandise industry – the company owns four of the top five toy franchises in the UK and US.

Last Christmas, the retail stores were prepared for the Frozen frenzy. In a rare move, they introduced caps on how much customers could buy in one transaction in certain stores.

At the Disney Store, customers were limited on certain Frozen toys to only buying two per person and retail toy giant Toys R Us imposed similar restrictions for online orders.

Discount stores like Poundworld have seized the Frozen market, introducing hundreds of themed products to flog to customers who can’t get or afford the coveted Disney Store goods.

Anna and Elsa can also be spotted on products that are nothing to do with the film, like on packages of the recent teen girl craze Loom bands and even cans of soup.

Marketing researchers are finding that whilst in the film everything Elsa touches turns to ice, in merchandise terms it turns to gold.

PRODUCTS

MARKETING

The movie production budget was $150 million, in January 2015 the film had $1.274 billion worldwide making it the highest animated film of all time.

Frozen managed to top the UK box office twice. Firstly for its release then in December for its re-release in the cinema (December 2014).

The merchandising has been considerably higher in proportion to a relatively box office total with more than 200 toys available.

When it was released in cinema on around 500 screens worldwide the film made 4.7million in its opening week.

The film sold over 5000,000 DVD copies in the first week and by the end of the third week had sold 1.45 million.

ADVERTISEMENTS Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3VwJm4NpJ4 Posters:

ANALYSIS

The advertisements such as the posters have all contributed by targeting the audience because it is making people aware of the movie and the trailer is telling the audience more about the film without giving away everything what is happening. There is a range of merchandise is mainly for girls however there is some products that can be for boys. The colour scheme of frozen which is predominantly blue can suggest that even though its about a princess the colour blue is mainly associated with boys which means they are most likely to watch it. Its an animated film which targets young children from the posters you can tell the genre. The mainly selling point could be the catchy song and the innocent young girl with the big eyes.

The trailer has contributed to the target audience because the first thing people see is that the creators of two popular Disney films (Tangled and Wreck it Ralph) have created Frozen. Humour is common throughout the trailer to keep people entertained and wanting to watch the full film. There are no words in this trailer just sound effects and music which still tells us a bit about the story. Using two characters that little children would find interesting is another way to get them to watch the film.