On a trip into Home Depot I happened to stroll through the paint department. Perhaps it was the thousands of bright paint cards, neatly arranged in a colorful rainbow, but for some reason I ended up in those aisles even though I was not shopping for paint. Strolling through the wonderful rows of reds, blues, oranges, greens, yellows, purples, black and more, one particular range of color strips caught my attention.
Thinking Outside the Box
We all know and love Disney for its amazing animated characters and movies. Who didn’t want to be Mickey Mouse’s friend as a child? Who didn’t cry when Bambie’s mother died? Who wasn’t thrilled to see poor Dumbo fly like a champion? As we have grown older, and perhaps have welcomed our own children into our lives, many of us have introduced our children to these wonderful characters and stories.
As a company, Disney must continue to seek ways to distribute its movies and related products. Of course, it follows the expected routes of reissuing its past classics as digitally remastered DVDs. No surprise there. But so does everyone else with a video library.
Now, coming up with a plan to to enable parents to kindle that same love of Disney in their children takes creativity and initiative. You can imagine how blown away I was when I saw the following paint color swatches.
Disney has teamed up with Behr Paint to produce an official color range for all of your favorites Disney characters. All the swatches are in the signature shape of that famous mouse, but the colors were astounding.
A Fully Immersed Brand Experience
Wow! What a stroke of genius! Encouraging parents to paint their son’s room the same green as Peter Pan’s green hat, or their daughter’s room a shade of blue from The Little Mermaid … now that’s thinking outside the box! Everyone knows that children love to get something new and fresh, so having their bedrooms painted would cause for excitement enough — having it painted Mickey Mouse black and red would be joy beyond control.
More importantly from a commercial sense, the child would see a daily reminder of Disney’s products and, recalling the fantastic brand experience of seeing the paint when it was first splashed on the walls, would be sure to ask mom or dad for the various Disney movies, toys and dolls. One can only imagine that this would eventually lead to the obligatory trip to Disneyland or Disney World.
Say what you want about Disney and its pervasive presence in marketing to youth around the world, yet I think the paint ploy is a real stroke of genius and an indicator of how thorough Disney is in its approach to maintaining its prominence in the lives (and wallets) of its fans.