Back Seat Marketers

Disney has been a master of using limited offers to foster demand. They did it with VHS, they did it again with with DVD’s by using limited offerings “from the vault”. We had to scour the market for a Pixar Toy Story 2 DVD which we paid a hefty premium for because it was no longer being produced.

Disney gets a double bang from limited offerings:

1. The offer has a floor downside if the promotion is not successful. This is especially important as any product launch has a cost, and having the ability to withdraw the message and offer allows Disney to pull back any combination of promotion, media vehicle and breadth of offer to the market as needed.

2. The offer creates a fixed quantity of supply, even when unlimited supply could be made available. Disney mastered the idea that restricting supply allowed them to keep desirable content from becoming overwhelmingly saturated. This has been part of the company’s marketing mystique worth learning.

Many web companies have adopted a similar practice of scarcity marketing (e.g. Google/start up Beta launches) which allow the same upside. Why don’t more product companies employ this model? With dropping capital costs and products becoming far more variable, I’d expect to see more soft launches of “first run” concepts to occur in the future.

Disney’s marketing control of ‘Montana’ franchise pays big [Knoxnews.com]