Notice anything different about the way the Walt Disney Company has been promoting its latest animated feature, “Home on the Range? That the marketing campaign for this movie may seem somewhat half-hearted?
Well — if you did — then you’re not the only one. Over the last week or so, I have received a dozen or more e-mails from Disney insiders. Each of them furious with the way the studio has been handling the promotion of “Home on the Range.”
Fairly typical of these notes was the one I just received from E. Xecutive, a longtime senior employee at Disney Feature Animation:
“Did you see the promotional campaign that Disney put together for ‘Home on the Range’? ‘On April 2, Bust a Moo’?! Beyond those banners for the multiplexes and that trailer in front of ‘Brother Bear,’ what else did the company do to try and build up public awareness of this movie? I saw a couple of bus shelter signs around LA and a few TV commercials that aired less than 10 days before HOTR officially opened. But — beyond that — nothing.
If you asked me, management did this deliberately. They wanted it to appear as if this movie did poorly during its domestic release. That way — when ‘Chicken Little’ opens next July and does marginally better than ‘Home on the Range’ did at the box office — Eisner and his cronies can say ‘See? We did make the right choice in shutting down WDFA’s traditional animation unit and switching to CG.’
It’s so aggravating when a film that we all worked so hard on, a movie that everyone here is so anxious to see succeed, gets sacrificed to service someone else’s agenda.”
Can this be true? Is it really possible that Disney’s “Home on the Range” was deliberately under-promoted? With the hope that — when the box office performance of the studio’s last traditionally animated film is compared to its first all CG effort — “Chicken Little” will come out looking that much more impressive?
Certainly — when one takes a look at the big picture — there have been some troubling decisions made by Mouse House managers in regards to this motion picture. First and foremost being “Home on the Range”‘s release date.
Now — typically — when a movie studio is anxious to make sure that a film reaches the widest possible audience (with the hope that this movie will then be able to earn the largest amount possible at the box office) it typically releases that motion picture in one of two time slots: the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day OR the period between Thanksgiving and New Years Day.
Whereas April … Well, April isn’t really a super-hot time for a studio to release a movie during. Sure — what with April school vacation and all — it is admittedly a better month than most for a family film to make its debut in. (Why for? Because — when the kids are out of school — the parents are obviously looking for things to take their offspring to. And what better way is there to kill a few hours then to take your children to see Disney’s latest animated feature?) But — that said — April is still not a primo month to premiere your picture in.
And yet here is Disney rolling “Home on the Range” out into theaters on April 2nd. So what’s up with that?
Was this because “Home on the Range” was a dog? Hardly. From what I hear, “HOTR” had reportedly performed extremely well during all of its test screenings. Audiences seemed to really enjoy this animated comic western. So much so that it was suggested that — were Walt Disney Pictures to put together a fairly innovative promotional program for this soon-to-be-released feature (I.E. something similar to that clever teaser campaign that the Mouse’s marketing department mounted for Disney’s June 2002 release, “Lilo and Stitch”) — “Home on the Range” could easily turn into the company’s next animated blockbuster.
Yet Disney didn’t do that. They opted instead to go with a fairly low key campaign. No clever ads featuring Maggie the Cow (voiced by Roseanne Barr) interacting with classic Disney characters. Instead, we got Disney’s garden variety promotional campaign for “Home on the Range.” No extra effort. Your standard bells and whistles.
Which — to a lot of people working in Feature Animation — gives credence to the whole Disney’s-deliberately-sandbagging-“Home-on-the-Range”-in-order-to make-“Chicken-Little”-look-really-good theory.
Particularly troubling to many WDFA staffers was Disney’s decision not to press McDonalds into offering a “Home on the Range” themed Happy Meal during the film’s domestic release. Which — these days — is absolutely crucial if you want to get the word out among parents and kids alike that you have a brand new movie out in theaters that you’d like them to see.
Of course, to be fair, I should mention that — when I pointed this out to someone in Disney’s marketing department earlier this week — their response was:
Jim:
“Home on the Range” is a motion picture that stars heroic cows. Hamburger, as you know, is made up of ground beef. Which — of course — comes from cattle. Both male cattle (bull) and female cattle (cow).
McDonalds nixed our idea of doing “Home on the Range” Happy Meals because they were concerned that kids — as they were playing with their Maggie the Cow toy — might suddenly realize that beef comes from cows, and then refuse to eat their hamburgers.
Yes, it was a disappointment when they opted not to do HOTR Happy Meals. And — as for why we didn’t approach any other fast food chain to do a “Home on the Range” promotion — we have a long term, exclusive deal with McDonalds that prevents us from approaching any other restaurant chains.
When I forwarded this note to a friend who had actually worked on “Home on the Range,” I got this somewhat frustrated reply:
What’s maddening about this whole situation was that — as we were making HOTR — we were told time and time again by WDFA management that we couldn’t say that Maggie, Mrs. Caloway and Grace were going to end up being slaughtered. We could say that Alameda Slim was rustling cattle. We could say that he was selling 5000 cows to Mr. Wesley. But we could never say that any of the cattle depicted in the film were headed to the slaughter house.
Why? Because the people in Disney’s marketing department were desperate to get McDonalds’ help in promoting “Home on the Range.” Particularly to get toys that were based on the film’s characters placed in those Happy Meal boxes. So we did all that hard work — deliberately steering HOTR’s story away from the whole slaughter house angle — for nothing.
And what really makes me crazy about this whole situation is how inconsistent McDonalds has been. Do you know what their most successful promotion last year was? When their restaurants were selling those “Finding Nemo” Happy Meal toys. Of course, given that McDonalds doesn’t sell a kids meal that features its “Fillet O Fish” sandwich, I guess that company execs weren’t all that concerned about children finding Nemo served up with a slice of cheese on a Sesame seed bun.
And what about when they sold all of those “Toy Story” Happy Meals? Don’t they think that some kids — as they were snarfing their French Fries — got upset when they found a Mr. Potato Head toy at the bottom of their box.
It’s just so maddening … and disappointing. Having McDonalds on board would have really helped raise “Home on the Range”‘s profile. Made more people aware that our movie was out in theaters. Now … Well, I guess we’re going to have to wait for DVD and hope that more people rediscover the film then.
Of course, having “Home on the Range” released just seven days before Disney’s delayed “Alamo” movie didn’t help matters either. Given that this meant that the Mouse House’s marketing staff now had to divide its time, staff and resources between two major productions that were rolling into theaters within a week of one another …
But — again — there are a lot of people (who — admittedly — used to work in traditional animation at the Walt Disney Company) who think that the Mouse deliberately didn’t do everything it could to insure that “Home on the Range” was a success. The folks that I spoke with in Marketing disagree, of course. They point to Disneyland’s “Little Patch of Heaven” petting zone as well as the windows on Main Street U.S.A. They also point to the “Home on the Range” themed float that leads off the daily parade at WDW’s Mgic Kingdom. As well as the piles of HOTR merchandise currently on sale at your local Disney Store.
“Believe me, Jim,” said one unnamed Disney promotional official. “We did everything that we could with ‘Home on the Range.’ We all liked this movie. We believed in this film. That’s why we did everything to help get the word out about this movie. It’s sad that so few people have turned so far. But give the movie time. Maybe it’ll get its second wind later this month. Hey, it happened with ‘Groove.’ Maybe it will happen again here.”
Still other folks who work at WDFA aren’t quite as convinced. “They missed so many obvious opportunities to promote this picture, ” said E . Xcutive. “And Disney’s marketing staff has been publicizing our feature length cartoons for decades now. So those guys obviously know how to do their jobs. And yet they suddenly bobble the campaign for ‘Home on the Range’ … and we’re just supposed to think that that’s a co-incidence.”
“It’s clear to me that the upper levels of Disney management didn’t really want ‘Home on the Range’ to be all that big a success. Not a flop, either. Just a medium-sized success. Something that ‘Chicken Little’ would have no trouble topping,” E. Xcutive said in conclusion. “Again, I think it’s sad that this picture didn’t get the sort of promotion that it needed, the kind of marketing that it deserved … all because of someone’s agenda in the Team Disney building.”
It’s kind of interesting to get both sides on this issue, don’t you think?