Disney and the HandsOn Network: Give a Day. Get a Disney Day
Posted: 1/22/2010 2:54:16 PM by
Carrie Urban Kapraun | with 0 comments
You may have seen some recent TV commercials featuring; Taye Diggs, Terri Hatcher, James Denton, Missy Piggy, Kermit the Frog and other Muppets characters for Disney’s Give a Day. Get a Disney Day. campaign.
The promotion, a partnership with HandsOn Network (a nationwide network of a half million volunteers) will distribute one million one-day, one-park tickets to people who volunteer at select charities. The promotion began January 1, 2010 and continues through December 15th, 2010.
The campaign launched with a tour of cities throughout the U.S. including Chicago, Seattle, Washington D.C., New York City, Houston and Philadelphia. The tour includes various Muppets and Disney characters and the above mentioned celebrities. Additionally, Disney employees have gotten involved through the VoluntEARS employee program.
Similar to its What Will You Celebrate? campaign in 2009, the Give a Day. Get a Disney Day. campaign is a continuation of Disney’s strategy to boost the number of park visitors through discounted tickets. The What Will You Celebrate? campaign gave guests who visited a Disney resort on their birthday free admission. According to Disney, about four million people registered online. It was one of Disney’s most popular campaigns in its history.
I personally love the Give a Day. Get a Disney Day. campaign. It provides a great incentive to volunteer and it is family focused, helping to promote volunteerism among children. Initial response to the campaign appears to be very positive and you can’t argue that a $79 free ticket is a great value. The impact for organizations is expected to be significant, generating an estimated two million volunteer hours (assuming two hours per person). Volunteers can also donate their tickets to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Additionally, the campaign allows up to eight members of a family to participate and children as young as six are eligible.
It is hard to find fault with this campaign, but I do have a couple of thoughts. First, I would have liked to have seen the HandsOn Network included in the national TV promotion of the campaign. I am sure HandsOn Network would have benefited from the media exposure. Not only is HandsOn Network a campaign partner, Disney is the presenting sponsor of HandsOn Network’s Family Volunteer Day, so the partnership extends beyond the promotion.
Second, the campaign has had some technical issues, mostly related to the web. On January 1st, 2010, the start of the campaign, the website crashed multiple times because of the number of people on the site. People tried for hours to register and feared that they would be unable to register to secure one of the million tickets. See peoples’ comments on the Disney Parks Blog. I believe the website issues have since been resolved.
Also, related to the website issues above, per a search on Google, there are at least three official sites for the campaign, two of which are still under construction. The multiple sites could contribute to people’s confusion. The campaign seems like a natural fit for social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. People are able to promote the campaign through personal posts on Twitter and Facebook, but at this point, there doesn’t seem to be official Twitter or Facebook pages for the campaign. However, HandsOn Network is promoting the campaign through its Twitter account.
Overall though, this is an outstanding program and hopefully the technical issues don’t dissuade people from participating. I will be eagerly waiting to find out the overall results of the campaign at the end of the year. Has anyone volunteered as part of the campaign?
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Filed under: cause marketing