Zootopia’s Marketing in the U.S. Prior to Premiere
Image above: A collage of Zootopia promo posters playing on an advertisement display in a real-life mall, captured by RucioDonk
Something very curious about Zootopia throughout the months prior to its premiere was the unconventional marketing strategy that was performed to catch the audience’s attention.
Most of Disney’s animated films are based in fairy tales and are developed into musicals, so they are advertised in a similar strategy. But with Zootopia being the first story in decades where anthropomorphic animals are the main characters and not being a musical, it was decided to promote the film in a very different way.
So WDAS combined many elements from both traditional and digital media to advertise this film. In general terms, most of the strategy was to mirror our society with the film’s one. We work, study, drive, and use technology like mammals in Zootopia do. Something summarized very well in the tweet below.
Just look at the opening image of this post. The promo posters at a glance just looked like what you’d normally see in a shopping mall… until you noticed that the brands are slightly different… and the, well, persons depicted in the ads are… not human.
Or take a look at these wrapped buses below, giving some illusion that animals, not humans, were riding in the buses:
Zootopia’s marketing was different, and it still is quite different from any movie marketing today. Instead of showing clips/static shots from scenes in the movie, it simply(?!) showed day-to-day life of anthropomorphic animals. And in effect, causing a “what if…” question to pop up in the minds of people who saw them. So fresh, so catchy.
Well, there’s a WHOLE LOT of other Marketing materials our Staff had gathered, painstakingly collected from a HUGE number of sources, all displayed in their glory on our website: