Disney Goes Viral
By Drew Muller
Like a strung out drug addict desperately seeking his or her fix, Disney is hopelessly hooked on being ‘hip.’ Faced with the constant threat of its target audience growing up and becoming interested in content of actual substance, Disney continually combats this maturation with advancement of its own. The princesses and fairytales have been supplanted with teen pop stars and laugh-track sitcoms that boast blatantly multi-cultural casts. Disney understands what its audience wants. This has been a main reason why it has been able to easily traverse the changing media landscape and remain an industry titan. But the company also understands things have changed, and a deal with YouTube displays its no-shame attitude toward recapturing viewers and bridging the age gap.
The deal, which was publicly announced last Monday, partners Disney Interactive Media and YouTube, and $10 to $15 million will be spent on original video series to be produced by Disney. They will be distributed on a co-branded channel appearing on both Dinsey.com and YouTube. In essence, this is the beginning of what could be Donald Duck meets David After Dentist and Nemo meets the Numa Numa guy. This is the viral meeting the virtues Disney has tried to impress upon our pliable young minds, all the while being covertly sexual. This is the Magic Kingdom meeting the untamed streets of user-powered content.
Alright, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, there won’t be a full-scale integration between the two media producers. We won’t be seeing Tinkerbell fluttering around the YouTube home page, but this strategic symbiosis speaks volumes about entities trying to transcend the barrier to certain consumer groups. It’s simple—Disney standing alone is having trouble pulling kids to its website, and it’s safe to say that YouTube is the ‘cool’ place to watch online videos. At the same time, YouTube will gladly welcome younger viewers comforted by Disney’s presence and the opportunity to placate parents who are not too fond of their children being able to freely access a slew of racy videos.
Disney will produce the Web series and plans to have eight series in production at any given time. The first, which is based on its puzzle app “Where’s My Water?” features an alligator named Swampy, arguably the hippest character in the history of hip. Video from the Disney TV channel and selected amateur video will appear on the YouTube channel as well.
YouTube is still considered the ‘cool’ place to watch and share videos, but with an inundation of dorky and clearly child-targeted content (see Swampy) we could witness the emergence of a deviant competitor site. If it provided all of the functions of YouTube sans the fairy dust, Disney and YouTube could have quite the problem on their hands.