Disney’s Interactive Beauty and the Beast Campaign

With movies being so commonplace in our society, movie marketers are always striving to use existing social media channels in innovative, creative ways to reach their audiences and engage in a creative manner.

The wildly popular Disney live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast excelled at this. Effectively using tent-pole marketing surrounding Valentine’s Day–a perfect fit for the love story–fans of the movie in major cities could use the hashtag #BeOurGuest to send “Beauty and the Beast”-themed roses to their valentine. After tweeting with the hashtag, users are prompted to send a direct message with the delivery address. The production company also used Twitter to hold a live Q&A session with the stars of the movie and featured stickers that fans could add to their profile pictures. The same hashtag #BeOurGuest was used across all the movie’s social media channels, making it easy for fans to connect across the web.

Beauty and the Beast took digital marketing a step further through Spotify. Cleverly pairing a lyrical digital platform with a musical, fans in the UK could log onto their accounts and see a video ad pointing them toward a website to “explore the Beast’s enchanted castle,” where their Spotify profiles were analyzed to “see which room was right for them.” The rooms included The Rose Room, The Ballroom, Belle’s Bedroom, etc, each with their own playlist of Disney songs. This is a really unique and effective twist on Spotify marketing that adds a special touch by recommending a playlist for each user. The site also promoted movie trailers and gave behind-the-scenes peeks into the movie’s production, as well as a plug to follow the official Spotify of the movie and its other social media channels. The interactive, personalized elements and channel integration strategies keep fans engaged, generate over 130,000 unique online conversations weekly, and tie into the magic of the story.