Why Putting Mulan DTC on Disney+ Is A Good Business Decision

[BadPinkTink]

The internet has gone into meltdown after Bob Chapeks announcement that Mulan is going straight to Disney+ and will be an up-charge product. From a business and marketing point of view however, its a genius move by Disney and shows how the entertainment business could be in the future.

For marketing geeks TWDC is a great fun way to see marketing in action in real time.

Some of the basics in marketing are

1. Know who your customers / audience are
2. Know where your customers / audience spend their time
3. Give them content they need and want and are willing to pay for
4. Attract new customers / audience

Know who your customers / audience are
The customers / audience for Mulan are the families, who would go to a big ticket cinema release as a treat. They will have probably have seen Mulan countless times, have the merchandise and in Disney Parks go to Mulan meet and greets.

The customers / audience for Mulan are also the hardcore Disney fans, who have pent up desire right now for something anything new for Disney. They would have the disposable income to go to cinema releases multiple times, no matter the ticket cost, as well as buying the physical DVD release and other collectibles.


Know where your customers / audience spend their time

Both of these target customers / audience already have Disney+

Disney are probably doing in depth studies of customer behavior analytics on Disney+ They will know how many times the animated Mulan has been watched, they will know which territories are watching the animated Mulan and so many other metrics.

Wait... what... Disney are tracking stats from Disney+ and know what I watch, when I watch it and on what device
oops sorry, just let out a marketing secret... huge amount of data analytics are tracked and analysed from most websites, put into graphs and reports......

Give them content they need and want and are willing to pay for
Both of these audiences / customers have the want to see Mulan and will pay for it.

For the families, it works out cheaper than then their one off cinema visit AND it can be watched multiple times at no extra cost.

For the hardcore Disney fans, the one off payment is far less than they would have spent on multiple cinema visits AND it can be watched multiple times at no extra cost.

Attract new customers / audience
As seen with Hamilton, the new subscriber to Disney+ rate soared with the release of Hamilton. There will be many people who up until now had not subscribed to Disney+ but who will now for the release of Mulan. These are people who might have thought Disney+ was just for kids, but are interested in the live action adaptation of Mulan.

Frankly TWDC , and the Bobs do not care about people who are outraged about the release of Mulan on Disney+ If you are outrage , then you are not the target audience and the Bobs do not care about your hurt feelings.

In the same way, TWDC , and the Bobs do not care about the outrage from cinema owners about bypassing them. TWDC has now created its own distribution channel and is getting their product to market without the middle man. Thats the name of the game, get the product to the customer, the end.

The world is changing and this change has just been accelerated by Covid 19.

Adoption Curve
In business and marketing there is a graph called the Adoption Curve, which illustrates the different types of customers / audience and where they are in a product life cycle.

When you use this in relation to Mulan and DTC upcharge releases or even just Disney+ subscribers in general, it shows a much clearer idea of TWDC business strategies

 

[BrianL]

Yeah, I really don't get all the tooth-gnashing about it. They have to do something to recoup the semnd on this movie so they are trying something new. Does it work for everybody? No, but they have to do what they think is best. Disney makes most of their decisions based on a family and I totally understand that even when those decisions aren't best for me as a solo, adult fan. Maybe this isn't the perfect solution - they'll be watching to see. They may tweak the next release if they need to do another movie like this, but right now there just aren't a lot of options.

 

[Helvetica]

I think it would have been better if they also released it to the drive-in theaters and the independents that are already open. I get where they’re coming from, but not releasing it to the drive-ins is pretty perplexing. The one by me is only playing 80’s movies since that’s all they can get. I understand Disney’s cash flow problems, but the relationships with their business partners is pretty important too.

Personally, I wouldn’t pay $30 for early digital access, but I would have thought about it as a 4K Blu-Ray Release. I definitely would have paid to see it in the drive-in, especially when there’s nothing else to watch.

Speaking of movies, I wonder if Disney will ever release the New Mutants.

 

[starry_solo]

I think it would have been better if they also released it to the drive-in theaters and the independents that are already open. I get where they’re coming from, but not releasing it to the drive-ins is pretty perplexing. The one by me is only playing 80’s movies since that’s all they can get. I understand Disney’s cash flow problems, but the relationships with their business partners is pretty important too.

Personally, I wouldn’t pay $30 for early digital access, but I would have thought about it as a 4K Blu-Ray Release. I definitely would have paid to see it in the drive-in, especially when there’s nothing else to watch.

Speaking of movies, I wonder if Disney will ever release the New Mutants.

maybe they will release to drive ins?

there is an announcement today re the New Mutants movie release. I forgot the details

 

[old lady]

There should do that with the other new releases .