The document outlines 12 steps that Disney took to successfully market Toy Story 3. They aimed to regain the audience from the previous films by continuing the storyline. They released subtle initial trailers to generate mystery before slowly revealing more details over time to build hype. Disney also created extensive online content and used social media to generate buzz. Traditional advertising methods were also employed to reach a broad audience. An alternate reality game and community aspects helped involve fans leading to the film's box office success.

1. Toy Story 3 – 12 steps of marketing:

2. 1: Regaining target audience. Disney knew that this movie would be a success if the audience of its predecessors were lured into the production. Since the trilogy was exciting and well received, they knew if they got their audience back, and so they aimed their movie at that same audience by adding a plot involving great continuity. It made the storyline relevant to them and that is what mainly attracted them to the third instalment. As well as that, they obviously tried to gain a new audience in addition to that as they aimed the movie towards children in terms of mature content, meaning kids born in the last decade could also watch it. The fact that they placed the first trailer in the adverts before the ‘UP’ movie also created by Pixar studios was also a good idea in gaining back the old audience.

3. 2:The first glimpse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roADdYWAv4A The first trailer of the movie was very subtle as it was shown almost a year before its release date. It only shown the toys setting up a logo, not any of the footage from the film. It included the enigma code in this sense as it provides mystery towards story content. It was placed in late November 2009 shown before the movie ‘UP’ and it was placed there since ‘UP’ is another Pixar movie and that type of audience would be interested in a Toy Story movie…

4. 3: Matching market campaign. The placement of the trailer was also in order for there to be a match between campaign and audience. Since the people watching ‘UP’ were typically Pixar film fans, they would be interested and would follow the marketing campaign of Toy Story 3. Not to mention, since both Toy Story and ‘UP’ are child films, the target age range will also be the same, extending the match of marketing and audience even more. Also, having Disney post the trailers online so the internet community could view them was a good idea. Since the original movie was out in 1995, moat of the kids who watched it back then would most likely being late teenagers now using the net. It is a good way to draw back the original audience as well…

5. 4: Drip feeding information. Soon after the first trailer, another trailer, with more actual movie content, was shown, revealing the plot and some of the events in the story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcpWXaA2qeg This feed generated a lot of hype and curiosity as to what will happen in the movie. The people who liked Toy Story began to talk about the new movie a lot more and wondered what would happen. Disney also started posting very subtle, but not large and apparent, hints of the new movie.

6. 5: Restricting info after an extent. Pixar seemed to actually defy this quite a bit, as it released several trailers and allowed photos and clips to be taken by fans online instead of trying to maintain the enigma it had at the start of the campaign. This was because at this point, Pixar gained a large fan-base which was guaranteed to watch the movie anyway just for the full story, so it decided to give out an unusually large amount of data to the public, leaving only the classified data private until exhibition stages. Smaller, less known movies tend to restrict data more because they have to generate interest the hard way.

7. 6: ‘Buzz’ on the net. Disneygo.com started to add new pages onto their Toy Story section, they added new content and features based on the movie TS3. This created a lot of buzz and hype on the website, and all over the net, it gained more interest from the audience at that time… The Pixar website also uploaded content about the movie on their pages and this generated even more buzz and chatter, and by doing so, expanded campaign success. Disney used all this buzz to generate a larger audience than any other Pixar movie.

8. 7: More content on net. Since the movie belonged to a famous company with a website already in place, there was no need for an official website. Instead they just placed a lot more content based on the film over the websites and the internet in general. This succeeded in only increasing interest of the movie campaign and got more buzz overall.

9. 8: Social site effectiveness. Since the characters’ actors were already famous by that point, the voice actors themselves just had to start chatting on social sites about the new film. Since they are famous, they will typically be heard on Facebook and Twitter, etc… They started talking to the online public about the movie and began to hype it up as they were responsible for doing at that stage. Tom Hanks, for an example, has even started chatting up about a fourth instalment just recently, and we are only one year gone after the third was released.

10. 9: Widget. http://www.flixster.com/movie/toy-story-3/widget/get Above is an example of a widget used in the production stages of this movie… A widget is typically used to generate further interest on a website. It is a document of a certain format used to be embedded onto the website and it gets the audience attracted to it as it provides more interest and attention towards the marketing. Obviously, since Toy Story was already a huge success, the widget was just a method to squeeze out extra little portions of attention and buzz over the campaign.

11. 10: Traditional stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ry2_MkyOhY Above is a mobile game based on the movie, and example general advertising and hype. Pixar also did the traditional stuff, such as releasing trailers on TV ads, releasing games on consoles and mobile accessories. This is cross-media conversion. They are using more than one form of media to get the interest across. Other traditional stuff includes pop-up adverts on websites, official website buzz, TV ads placed in relevant channels and time slots, etc…

12. 11: ARG. Parallel to the campaign, movie producers tend to create an ARG, consisting of interfaces, links, and texts and other sources all linking to the movie content. Maybe a voice mail will be included. In general, these will allow the audience to contribute as a community, working together to solve set puzzles, etc… TS3 did this by putting a PS3 game out before the movie so the players can connect online and contribute to the community via the game edition. They also added in online games and other stuff to get the community involved more.

13. 12: Finally… Create another thread on the web, based on backstories of characters, while still relating it to the promotional content. Maybe you can do this via actor contributions via social sites, etc… Make sure that you have enough interest gathered in order to practically guarantee a good exhibition success rate. TS3 did this via the main actors such as Tom Hanks talking about the content of the film and the situational status for the characters, generating final ounces of interest and curiosity… In the end, TS3 was a huge marketing success that managed to be even more successful in the exhibition stage, where it grossed more than any other Pixar film…