Amid all of the holiday chaos, you might have missed an absolutely astounding announcement from Disney in early December. Their Facebook presence extends to over 100 million fans across more than 200 Facebook Pages, and they’re adding more than 5 million fans per week.
Before we go any further, we should mention that Disney is a client, and we are one of several social agencies who have had a hand in helping them establish their Facebook presence. But this isn’t about tooting our own horn. This is about recognizing a brand that has not only made a huge commitment to social but truly gets it.
Something For Everyone
Disney maintains more than 200 Facebook Pages for their characters, movies, subsidiaries, services and theme parks. We’ve previously talked about how the new Facebook Groups could be used to fulfill a similar purpose, but using Pages gives Disney access to more robust functionality.
By offering such a diverse array of Pages, Disney has made it possible for fans to Like only the aspects of Disney that they like most. Ratatouille fans might not be Pirates of the Caribbean fans, but giving each a Page keeps fans of both in the Disney Facebook umbrella.
This allows Disney to deliver extremely relevant and targeted updates to fans. It also makes it less likely that fans will unsubscribe from all Disney updates on a whim, since doing so would require a fan to visit all of the individual Pages and click the unsubscribe link on each.
All Together Now
To preserve a sense of brand identity, Disney uses its main Facebook Page as a hub for all of its individual Pages. Users who haven’t already Liked the main Page are taken to the “Disney Pages” default landing tab, which lists the five most-Liked Disney Pages, the total number of Likes among all of the Pages and a streaming feed of updates from all Disney Pages.
With a click, users can expand the list of Pages to show all 200+ Pages, with a Like button next to each. Users can also see which of their friends like which Pages—and with so many of them, it’s virtually guaranteed that they’ll see several of their friends in the list.
The list also reinforces the message that Disney is much more than a mouse; it offers a wide variety of experiences to fans of virtually any age and demographic. And many users might even discover that they’ve already Liked some Disney Pages (like Tron or The Golden Girls) without being aware of the Disney connection.
Not Such a Small World After All
Facebook has a (probably well-deserved) reputation for being a place where people go to spend time doing anything except what they’re supposed to be spending time on. Successful Pages give their fans something to spend their time on, like a lively community, relevant information or fun apps—what we in the biz call a “compelling brand experience.”
Disney has done an excellent job of cultivating all of those across their Facebook presence. For example, on the Disneyland and Walt Disney World Pages, fans can plan their Disney getaway on the “I’m Going…” tabs, create a Stick Figure Family or assemble a Disney Photobook album to commemorate their vacation. Die-hard Disneyphiles can spend hours visiting each Page in turn, with fresh content waiting for them as they cycle back around to previously visited Pages.
Now, it must be said that, normally, Disney’s decentralized strategy would be a Facebook no-no, spreading the brand too thin across too many properties to maintain a unified strategy. But because Disney is such a strong and “Like-able” brand with a wide variety of diverse properties, it works.
And at the core of it, that’s what makes Disney’s approach so compelling. There’s no “one size fits all” social solution, and aping Disney’s strategy would probably be a recipe for disaster for most brands. But for brands looking to achieve social media success in 2011, it’s worth considering the value of breaking the right rules for the right reasons.
