The “Mr and Mrs Incredible” Disneyland Paris Campaign – My Two Cents

In this holiday season, the year is almost over and most of us are running like crazy to wrap up our work in time and to buy some gifts for our siblings and friends. Last week, the buzzword that stuck to my head was “Groupon” which finally landed to Montreal. In the meantime, I ate a bad meal at a restaurant I went because of a Tuango ticket I bought two months ago on an impulsive buying move (damn marketers!). Therefore, I won’t discuss about Groupon since you should already be fed up with that news! Instead, I decided to give you my two cents, as Kent Brockman would say, about a marketing campaign that has landed in Europe earlier this year, that is to say, the “Mr and Mrs Incredible” Disneyland Paris campaign. So let’s jump feet first.

The situation

It is a well-documented fact that Disneyland Paris has had financial difficulties since its creation in 1992, due to unclear managerial objectives, strategies and goals, a questionable location and a ferocious nearby indirect competition. However, at the beginning of July 2010, Disneyland Paris decided to launch a marketing campaign that caught my attention, but unfortunately it caught my attention after I went to Paris in June 2010.

The campaign’s idea

As part of the Disneyland Paris 2010 campaign, multiple emails where sent to influential bloggers that may help to spread the word that Disneyland Paris is changing. Here is the message that was sent to some of my fellow bloggers in the United Kingdom (UK):

“Mr and Mrs Incredible will be landing in your Facebook Page to celebrate the New Generation Festival in Disneyland Paris. Even worse: they kiss at the end. In front of all your friends.

Go to www.theyarelanding.co.uk, choose your favorite characters and make them land in your Facebook page, for the best and mostly for the worst. This is gonna be rough!”

The micro-website for the Disneyland Paris campaign
The micro-website for the Disneyland Paris campaign

The micro-website for this campaign offers you to make one of three groups of characters land to your Facebook account in an unconventional way, and in one of four languages (French, English, Italian and Spanish). However, I must admit that the selected URL for the campaign is not really a good choice, but it could have been worse for sure compared to some micro-website URLs I can observe at metro stations every morning. Furthermore, the creative usage of Facebook connect (see the video below) is hitting you right in the face whatever your nationality is. Furthermore, aside from the creative aspect of this campaign there are multiple points of discussion concerning the positioning of this campaign that could be taken in consideration to judge the effectiveness of this campaign.

Point 1 – The competition

When individuals/tourists are flying to Paris, it is generally not to visit an amusement park but more to visit museums, monuments, and/or to enjoy the shopping, the great food, the crazy metro and the French accent. Thus, putting Disneyland Paris on the consideration set of tourists and also Parisians is not an easy task, especially since amusement park are not as present in the European tradition as they are in the North American one. Thus, for the emotional appeal, I like this campaign.

Point 2 – The 3Ws of targeting

Moreover, the 3Ws of marketing could be analyzed, that is to say: (1) when to target? (2) who to target? and (3) where to target?

When to target?

In the case of amusement parks, at the beginning of the season and maybe some time in the middle should be the optimal moment to launch a marketing campaigns, but most budget should focus at the beginning of the season. This campaign was officially launched on July 2nd 2010 which is in the middle of the season.

Who to target?

The teens, the kids or the parents? That is the question. So who is going to amusement parks accompanied with parents? The answer, kids with age lower than 12, which imply that most of their parents are aged between 25 and 40. Thus, targeting these parents may be the solution! And what about the teens? They are coming without their parents anyway, but they may be mainly local consumers. All in all, most of these consumers have Facebook and are heavily present online, which suggests that that the use of Facebook connect is an appropriate tool in this case.

Where to target?

So where to find potential visitors? Where are these people physically coming from and how to find them? For the 25 to 40 years old young couple, they may be mostly in France, but also in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain. Don’t forget the United States since they are rollercoaster fanatics. Thus, the campaign could have included a version for the Americans (US) and the Germans. I don’t think it would have taken that much time. And what about Japanese which you find everywhere in Paris? The problem is that they are not necesarily on Facebook but mainly on Mixi, which could be labelled as the Japanese Facebook.

Point 3 – The main objectives

For this type of campaign, there are mainly two objectives which are: (1) to increase the number of tickets sold for the amusement park, and (2) to increase brand awareness. The first objective is a short-term one, which is to sell more tickets for the amusement park right away before a potential bankruptcy can occur, while the second one is more a long-term one, which is to increase the amount of individuals talking about the campaign and the amusement park to eventually get into the consideration set of these individuals when they will be heading to Paris.

Conclusion

So what do you think of this campaign? If you would have planned a trip to Paris this year, would it have an impact on your decision to go to Disneyland Paris with friends, kids or family?

Enjoy the ride!

Jean-Francois

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…And the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics Goes to Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides

As an alumnus in economics (BSc, U. de Montréal, 2005), I must admit that I always try to keep myself updated with the Nobel Prize winners in economics. Switching from economics to marketing, was a hard but inevitable decision for me at the time, since the research I am currently conducting is related to economics, especially macroeconometrics, but it is not considered as part of economics, more precisely as part of marketing and strategy.

Thus, on this Canada’s Thanksgiving day, at 11AM this morning (5PM, Stockholm time, Sweden), I am happy to share the information that the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in economics to Peter A. Diamond (Massachusetts Institute of Technology; USA), Dale T. Mortensen (Northwestern University; USA), and Christopher A. Pissarides (London School of Economics; Cyprus, UK) three researchers for their contributions in the analysis of markets with search frictions. Instead of repeating word by word what both of the recipients have to say, here are some links to some Nobel Prize winners information.

Professor Bertil Holmlund (left), Permanent secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences Staffan Normark (center) and Professor Per Krusell announce the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday October 11th in Stockholm, Sweden.
Professor Bertil Holmlund (left), Permanent secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences Staffan Normark (center) and Professor Per Krusell announce the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday October 11th in Stockholm, Sweden.

Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics speed read
Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics Prize Announcement
Diamond, Mortensen, and Pissarides 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics Press release

Here is also a list of past Nobel Prize winners in Economics from 1969 to 2009, with University of attachment when the prize was awarded, country of attachment (origins, work, etc…), and Curriculum Vitae in parentheses:

1969 – Ragnar Frisch (University of Oslo; Norway; CV), for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes, and Jan Tinbergen (Netherlands School of Economics; Netherlands; CV).

1970 – Paul, A, Samuelson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology; USA; CV), for efforts to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory.

1971 – Simon Kuznets (Harvard University; USA, Ukraine; CV), for developing concept of using a country’s gross national product to determine its economic growth.

1972 – Kenneth J. Arrow (Harvard University; USA; CV) and Sir John R. Hicks (Oxford; UK; CV), for theories that help to assess business risk and government economic and welfare policies.

1973 – Wassily Leontief (Harvard University; USA, Russia; CV), for devising the input-output technique to determine how different sectors of an economic, social and institutional phenomena.

1974 – Gunnar Myrdal (Stockholm University; Sweden; CV) and Friedrich A. von Hayek (University of Salzburg; UK, Austria, Germany; CV), for pioneering analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.

1975 – Leonid V. Kantorovich (Academy of Sciences at Moscow; Russia; CV) and Tjalling C. Koopmans (Yale University; USA, Netherlands; CV), for work on the theory of optimum allocation of resources.

1976 – Milton Friedman (University of Chicago; USA; CV), for work in consumption analysis and monetary history and theory, and for demonstration of complexity of stabilization policy.

1977 – Bertil Ohlin (Stockholm University; Sweden; CV) and James E. Meade (University of Cambridge; UK; CV), for contributions to theory of international trade and international capital movements.

1978 – Herbert A. Simon (Carnegie Mellon University; USA; CV), for research into the decision-making process within economic organizations.

1979 – Sir Arthur Lewis (Princeton University; UK, Saint-Lucia; CV) and Theodore Schultz (University of Chicago; USA; CV), for work on economic problems of developing nations.

1980 – Lawrence R. Klein (University of Pennsylvania; USA; CV), for developing models for forecasting economic trends and shaping policies to deal with them.

1981 – James Tobin (Yale University; USA; CV), for analyses of financial markets and their influence on spending and saving by families and businesses.

1982 – George J. Stigler (University of Chicago; USA; CV), for work on government regulation in the economy and the functioning of industry

1983 – Gérard Debreu (University of California, Berkeley; USA, France; CV), in recognition of his work on the basic economic problem of how prices operate to balance what producers supply with what buyers want.

1984 – Sir Richard Stone (University of Cambridge; UK; CV), for his work to develop the systems widely used to measure the performance of national economics.

1985 – Franco Modigliani (Massachusetts Institute of Technology; USA, Italy; CV), for his pioneering work in analyzing the behavior of household savers and the functioning of financial markets.

1986 – James M. Buchanan (Center for Study of Public Choice, Fairfax, VA; USA; CV), for his development of new methods for analyzing economic and political decision-making.

1987 – Robert M. Solow (Massachusetts Institute of Technology; USA; CV), for seminal contributions to the theory of economic growth.

1988 – Maurice Allais (École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris; France; CV), for his pioneering development of theories to better understand market behavior and the efficient use of resources.

1989 – Trygve Haavelmo (University of Oslo; Norway; CV), for his pioneering work in methods for testing economic theories.

1990 – Harry M. Markowitz (City University of New York, NY; USA; CV), William F. Sharpe (Stanford University; USA; CV), and Merton H. Miller (University of Chicago; USA; CV), whose work provided new tools for weighing the risks and rewards of different investments and for valuing corporate stocks and bonds.

1991 – Ronald Coase (University of Chicago; USA, UK; CV), for his pioneering work in how property rights and the cost of doing business affect the economy.

1992 – Gary S. Becker (University of Chicago; USA; CV), for “having extended the domain of economic theory to aspects of human behavior which had previously been dealt with-if at all-by other social science disciplines”.

1993 – Robert W. Fogel (University of Chicago; USA; CV) and Douglass C. North (Washington University; USA; CV), for their work in economic history.

1994 – John F. Nash (Princeton University; USA; CV), John C. Harsanyi (University of California, Berkeley; USA, Hungary; CV), and Reinhard Selten (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn; Germany; CV), for their pioneering work in game theory.

1995 – Robert E. Lucas, Jr. (University of Chicago; USA; CV), for having and the greatest influence on macroeconomic research since 1970.

1996 – James A. Mirrlees (University of Cambridge; UK; CV) and William Vickrey (Columbia University; USA, Canada; CV), for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives.

1997 – Robert C. Merton (Harvard University; USA; CV) and Myron S. Scholes (Long Term Capital Management, Greenwich, CT; USA, Canada; CV), for developing a formula that determines the value to stock options and other derivatives.

1998 – Amartya Sen (Trinity College, Cambridge; India, UK; CV), for his contributions to welfare economics.

1999 – Robert A, Mundell (Columbia University; Canada, USA; CV), for his work on monetary dynamics and optimum currency areas.

2000 – James J. Heckman (University of Chicago; USA; CV) and Daniel L. McFadden (University of California, Berkeley; USA; CV), for developing methods used in statistical analysis of individual and household behavior.

2001 – George A. Akerlof (University of California, Berkeley; USA; CV), A. Michael Spence (Stanford University; USA; CV), and Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University; USA; CV), for market analyses with asymmetric information.

2002 – Daniel Kahneman (Princeton University; USA, Israel; CV), for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science; Vernon L. Smith (George Mason University; USA; CV), for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis.

2003 – Robert F. Engle III (New York University; USA; CV) and Clive W.J. Granger (University of California, San Diego; UK, USA; CV) for developing the statistical tools for stock prices.

2004 – Finn. E. Kydland (Carnegie Mellon University & University of Santa Barbara; Norway, USA; CV) and Edward C. Prescott (Arizona State University & Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; USA; CV) for their contribution in macroeconomics.

2005 – Robert Aumann (University of Jerusalem; Israel, Germany; CV) and Thomas Schelling (University of Maryland; USA; CV) for their contribution to Game Theory.

2006 – Edmund S. Phelps (Columbia University; USA; CV), for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy”.

2007 – Leonid Hurwicz (University of Minnesota; USA, Poland, Russia; CV), Eric S. Maskin (Princeton University; USA; CV), and Roger B. Myerson (University of Chicago; USA; CV) for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.

2008 – Paul Krugman (Princeton University; USA; CV), for his work on international trade and the benefits trade brings to local communities.

2009 – Elinor Ostrom (Indiana University & Arizona State University; USA; CV) for her work on economic governance, particularly in managing Commons, and Oliver E. Williamson (University of California, Berkeley; USA; CV) for his work on the economics and economic boundaries of firms and companies

And here a prediction list of winners for this year from the Harvard University Economics Department website, thanks to well-known Professor Greg Mankiw’s blog for this link:

1 – Robert Barro (Harvard University) – 10.3%
2 – Martin Weitzman (Harvard University) – 5.5%
3 – Paul Romer (Stanford University) – 4.9%
4 – Jean Tirole *Université de Toulouse) – 4.9%
5 – Peter A. Diamond (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) – 4.2%
6 – Robert Shiller (Yale University) – 4.2%
7 – Alberto Alesina (Harvard University) – 3.6%
8 – Lars Peter Hansen (University of Chicago) – 3.6%
9 – Paul Milgrom (Stanford University) – 3.6%
10 – Richard Thaler (University of Chicago)- 3.6%

As you can from this list, Peter A. Diamond ranked 5th on this list was one of the winners, all the other ones non-winners will still be top contenders next year unless they die.

Conclusion

Anyway, for those who didn’t really know about these researchers, it is simply a good moment to read more about who they are, for the other ones, maybe it’s a good opportunity to humanize these authors by watching their Nobel Prize speech.

Have a nice one,

Jean-Francois

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