6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons

6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons From Disney World

Disney World isn’t just a magical place for families or kids.  It’s also pretty magical for marketers too.  The Disney Institute has been around for more than two decades teaching business people from any industry how to apply techniques that have been honed at Disney Parks over years and years.

So, here are 6 Magical Exceptional Marketing Lessons that Disney World uses:

6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons - #1 Branding Everything

At Disney, you can’t look in any direction without seeing branding all around.  In the park it works to surround you with the Disney experience at every moment.  Not to mention the side benefit of Disney likely negotiating some discount on the construction work from Stanley in exchange for allowing them to put their brand on the signage seen by millions of park attendees.

6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons - #2 Let Your Customers Be Lazy

In front of nearly every ride there are stroller parking – and in Magic Kingdom, there are plenty of strollers because nearly every group have some small children.  There are areas set aside for stroller parking, and clear instructions for where to park your stroller. In most places, this might create chaos.  At Disney, they have a “stroller guy” whose entire job is to pick up after lazy customers.

6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons - #3 Take The Money

Some of the rides and attractions at Disney are sponsored – including the “People Mover” train ride, which is randomly sponsored by Alamo car rental.  Instead of doing something smart and potentially even strategic, like sponsoring the tram that takes you back to your rental car (which might actually BE from Alamo) or even negotiating to have some special parking priveleges from Disney for customers who rent from Alamo – they decided to sponsor a random ride.  Disney, of course, took the money.  What’s the lesson?  If someone wants to give you dumb money – always say yes.

6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons - #4 Surprises Are Offered Everyday

The FastPass system at Disney is a work of analytical art that is designed to keep people moving through attractions faster and in a more optimized way.  To use it, you just insert your own park ticket and the FastPass will give you a specific time to return to a ride in order to board it without a wait.  At several, you also got the unexpected surprise of a bonus ticket to a nearby (and usually less popular) ride.  Thanks to this bonus ticket, you have the chance to ride an extra ride in the same time and feel just a little better about your experience all day.

6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons - #5 Don't Prevent The Inevitable

Many of the rides take photos of you while you are on board.  Those photos are sold to riders after the ride – a classic amusement park upselling technique.  At Disney, they show you the images and put a person below those images just standing by to answer questions.  Of course, some people will just take a cell phone photo of their image instead of buying one.  Many places would put up big signs preventing that.  Disney, instead, puts a person there working under the photos to make it a little more socially awkward to take a photo of your photo … but they don’t outlaw it.  The result is that they probably still get a high percentage of people buying the photo who really want it, but they don’t need to have the typical corporate policy of outlawing the inevitable group of people who are happy with lower quality photo they take themselves.

6 Exceptional Marketing Lessons - #6 Give Idiot-Proof Directions

People are generally dumb when it comes to finding their way around.  As a result, signs have to be super easy to navigate and offer simple ways to get from one place to another.  Disney does a great job keeping their signs easy to understand, having a generally logical layout for parks and lots of places to pick up copies of maps as you’re walking around their parks.

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- Christer B Herou