How Disney goes to Gemba to extend marketing for parks?

They looked at how being on the ground with your consumer is the tiebreaker when it comes to "making it happen" in the current marketing climate. It’s likely you’re being pushed now to deliver more results in an exceedingly challenging marketplace. If you’re not engaging your audience directly with face-to-face marketing, you may be missing your biggest opportunity. – From Red7 Media on Vimeo.

Alex Ruiz, Promotions Manager of Disney Parks, and Steve Randazzo, President of Pro Motion Inc., examine Disney Parks’ highly successful "What Will You Celebrate?" tour campaign, as well as look at other efforts that enjoyed similar results.

Integration of Experiential: How Disney Parks Grabbed Attention, Drove ROI and Made Their Marketing a Celebration to Remember

From the ProMotion1.com Website:

What they did: Personally distribute over 150,000 helium filled iconic Mickey Mouse balloons with golden invitations for people in 31 different markets across the country over the course of 30 weeks.

How they did it: The tour consisted of two teams with multiple vehicles, hundreds of Pro Motion hired brand ambassadors and hundreds of local-market volunteers fulfilling the program. Visits were structured as quick-hits. Preceded by pre-arrival awareness generated by in-market media partnerships, tour teams spent one-to-two days in each city delivering unique in-market celebration activities amidst a buzz of media coverage. They also showed up to celebrate special accomplishments at places such as the Race for the Cure in Chicago and, fresh on the heels of her son’s record-breaking Olympic triumph, at the middle school where Debbie Phelps principals.

When we think of all the different types of marketing that we do it is always about how can we make it seem real. The easiest answer to this so many times is simply go to Gemba. I have an old saying that even in this day of high technology seems to becoming more and more true: Business is still done with a handshake.