Disney Mickey Mouse comic strip returns to America

Mike Rhode mgrhode at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 29 14:42:13 CEST 2003


Disney Presents Mickey Mouse, Again 
Media Giant Pushes to Make Cartoon Rodent Hip 

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 26, 2003; Page E01 


GLENDALE, Calif. -- If you thought Mickey Mouse was
already ubiquitous, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The sainted and globally famous four-fingered
trademark of the Walt Disney Co. is about to become
the centerpiece of a movie, retail, publishing, video
and television campaign aimed at amplifying its
marketplace presence.

This year is Mickey's 75th birthday, and the Disney
brass is determined not to let the cheerful geriatric
rodent fade from public consciousness, the victim of
company marketers too afraid to exercise the mouse's
branding power for fear of cheapening Walt Disney's
most important creation.

On Wednesday at a theater in this Los Angles suburb,
Disney Chairman Michael D. Eisner led a parade of
company executives in a rally of hundreds of employees
to reinforce that message.

Mickey "is from and of every country around the
world," said Deborah Dugan, president of Disney
publishing. "Bugs Bunny wishes he could say that," she
added, referring to the Warner Bros. character.

Beginning this fall, Gemstone Publishing will
reintroduce Disney comic books featuring Mickey and
his pals, hoping to tap into the robust comic-book
sector, which spawned and capitalized on the movie
success of "Batman," "Spider-Man" and "The Incredible
Hulk." Disney has also launched a retro-Mickey retail
blitz by selling the famous Mickey T-shirts, which
have in the past two years become hip, worn by such
celebrities as rocker Lenny Kravitz and style-maker
Sarah Jessica Parker in the HBO comedy, "Sex in the
City."

Roger Wyett, executive vice president of Disney's
global apparel, noted that Parker wore a Mickey
T-shirt on a recent episode of "Sex in the City" and
by the following Tuesday, the ultra-chic Fred Segal
Hollywood clothing boutique had already sold 60 of the
T-shirts -- at $43 each.

"We timed it -- [Parker] was onscreen with the T-shirt
for four minutes," Wyett said. In other words, it was
dream marketing for Mickey.

Wyett noted that when Kravitz appeared in a magazine
photograph two years ago wearing a vintage Mickey
T-shirt, "it hit us like a two-by-four over the head."
Trips to vintage-clothing stores -- where used Mickey
T-shirts were selling for $100 to $300 -- confirmed
that Mickey T's were a growing cultural phenomenon and
Disney needed to monetize the trend.

Disney's consumer-products division has been flagging
since the decline of the character apparel trend in
the mid-'90s (Warner Bros. has felt the same pinch on
its character wear). Disney hopes that a Mickey
full-frontal assault can help the division, though
there is no guarantee that consumers have more of an
appetite for the mighty Mouse, as evidenced by the
division's poor results.

In the second quarter this year, revenue for the
consumer-products division was $500 million, down 14
percent from the second quarter of 2002. Much of the
drag comes from soft sales at North America's 387
Disney stores, down from 522. Disney sold its stores
in Japan last year and said in May that it would also
sell its North American and European stores to a
retailer practiced in running stores.

At the same time, Disney has turned to alternative
ways of marketing its products. 

Nina Jacobson, president of Disney's Buena Vista
Motion Pictures Group, was asked to hand out Mickey
T-shirts to movie stars who visited her office with
the hope that they would wear them and be
photographed. She gave them to Sharon Stone, Jodie
Foster and Freddie Prinze Jr., among others.

Disney is engaging in guerrilla marketing elsewhere in
its home city. Disney enlisted a graffiti artist to
render classic black-and-white Mickey comic strips on
the sides of buildings on chic Sunset Boulevard and
Melrose Avenue -- with permission, of course.

Mickey's muscling-up is largely the work of Andrew
Mooney, head of Disney consumer products. When he
arrived four years ago, he found Mickey bound by
ancient and Byzantine strictures determining how he
could appear and in what form. Mickey was something of
a sacred figure, and many in the company feared
blaspheming him by putting him on too many products.

Mooney, an early employee of Nike, realized that
Mickey was Disney's "swoosh' -- the equivalent of the
logo on Nike shoes. At the same time, Mooney sought to
preserve the aging mouse's dignity, employing him
judiciously.

For example, in November, dozens of Mickey statues,
painted in various motifs, similar to the "Party
Animal" donkeys and elephants around Washington D.C.,
will debut in Disney World. They will later tour the
country.

More Mickey-intensive efforts will roll out over the
next three years, including "The Three Musketeers," a
straight-to-video movie scheduled to be released in
August 2004. In fall of next year, Disney comic strips
featuring Mickey will appear in newspapers.

But it's likely that nothing will spread Mickey's
mouse-face as widely as a three-year U.S. Postal
Service commemorative stamp program that is to begin
next year. The stamp designs will debut at Walt Disney
World in October.

Vivendi Universal's Grinch character from Dr. Seuss
books has appeared on a stamp, as well as other
trademarked images owned by large corporations.

If the Mickey campaign goes well, Wyett suggested
other projects for Disney. 

"What's next?" he asked the group of employees.
"Donald Duck? Tinkerbell?"



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