Disney IP derivative product marketing--A case study of LinaBell

: In recent years, the culture of "cute things" has blossomed everywhere. People use cute things to cure their inner stress. Disney's doll LinaBell has been widely spread for her cute appearance. Behind the popularity of LinaBell is the deep grasp of people's inner emotions and the precise implementation of marketing strategy. As the derivative of Disney IP, how did LinaBell develop her own marketing strategy in the background with the characteristics of The Times and achieve success?


Introduction
Judging from the trend of online public opinion on related topics of LinaBell, from the statistical period of September 1 to October 31, she is in a no problem "popularity rise period". From the point of view of the overall popularity, if compared with Mega tron, who became the "new" ace in Beijing Universal Studios because of the "talk change", LinaBell is still more than two times more popular than him. Even compared with the family's top current predecessor Stellalou, LinaBell also has three times the heat of Stellalou, relying on the "new aura", so that LinaBell's peripheral products attract long lines of tourists. In the first three days of her role on the line, the park needed to queue for 3 to 5 hours to buy her peripheral products. By the end of the holiday, the products were out of stock. The original price of the products ranged from 99 yuan to 369 yuan, and the price increase of some agency was as high as 300 yuan. Now, the original price of 299 dolls are sold for nearly 1,000 yuan. In response to the current situation of short supply, scalpers have also begun to show their skills. Various copycat versions have emerged in the trading platform, and there has even been the "robber sales" of distribution sales. Some people fly to Shanghai specifically for her to buy scalpers at high prices and apply for a six-month card. Why are so many people willing to pay for a fictional doll?

Disney Culture IP
First famous for its animation production, Disney has created the sound and picture simultaneous film Mickey Mouse series, the feature-length animated film Snow White series and the modern animated film Beauty and the Beast, Frozen and so on. The company's business tends to diversify and gradually realizes the all-round expansion from the single film production to the animation as the core. Since 1955, Disney has established 6 theme parks around the world, which continue to provide the public with entertainment experience. Disney is a "storyteller", and its core competence is the development, arrangement, incubation and dissemination of cartoon characters. The cartoon characters created by Disney have long been deeply rooted in people's hearts. For Disney, the creation of cultural IP is the "weapon" for the long-term development of the brand. By creating a multi-IP culture, it can not only capture users' eyeballs, but also achieve market segmentation, attract different cultural IP from different groups, and ensure the "purity" of the group's product appeal. Cultural IP image can enable the brand to communicate with the audience in a closer anthropomorphic image, and can quickly transform the relationship between the brand and people into the relationship between people. At the same time, as part of content marketing, IP image can help produce a large amount of self-made content that allows the brand to communicate better content. The visual image extends to the brand image. Disney implants a brand image with personality and vitality in the minds of consumers, thus creating a sense of role. This sense of role resonates with consumers from the cultural, psychological, emotional and social aspects such as values, personality characteristics, mood of life, and identity expression. It is under the background of such a super IP as Disney that LinaBell has gained a lot of attention since her debut.

Products of The Times
LinaBell was born into the "Duffy family," and the Duffy family is a unique existence. Duffy was originally a doll bear given to Mickey by Minnie, but he strayed into a magical world and became a talking bear. Duffy loves society and makes a lot of friends, which become the Duffy Family. None of the dolls are based on movies or television, but Disney has given them fictional characters, but the strange thing is that the Duffy Family is a very popular Disney series and has been nicknamed the"Money Snatchers" by Internet users. They've garnered a lot of traffic and fans just for being cute and cute. It turns out that even without a movie or TV background,these dolls are still very popular. With the popularization of the Internet and mobile clients, we have gradually entered the era of big data and fragmented communication, and the reading habits of the audience have undergone qualitative changes. When we watch short videos on social platforms, compared with watching an anime movie, the burden is much less. Following and liking LinaBell, a few short videos can help users build cognitive models without a single anime. Just like many people like Mickey, but can't remember the plot of Mickey's animation. In such a fragmented era, even if LinaBell has no film or television works, her cute appearance, personalized design and the spread of short videos are enough to attract users' attention.

People make images
In terms of image creation, LinaBell has a pair of harmless blue eyes and a fluffy pink tail. Research has shown that animals have an instinctive need for a fluffy，squishy touch, so who could resist a cute little fox?① Human beings live in the forest;② Keen on solving mysteries, like a detective; ③ Well informed and knowledgeable about nature;④ find humor and fun even in the face of difficulties;⑤ The magnifying glass and her long tail will be used when exploring puzzles. These five personality traits are just right to capture the imagination of fans without being too rigid, providing a basic illustrative framework. As a result, everyone's knowledge of LinaBell can be enriched through her own portrayal. All Fans need is a lovely moment from her now, and a shared memory with her in the present moment that doesn't require a story. Disney has given fans some of the power to improve their characters, allowing them to reinforce and extend the meaning of cuteness.

Personified performance and immersive experience
The term "immersive" is originally derived from the flow experience theory of the American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi --that is, "the feeling of participation that one gets when one is fully engaged in an activity". The law of Design explains"being present" as "a kind of extreme concentration on the real surroundings, even a kind of extreme joy and satisfaction of losing one's sense of feeling". Disney emphasizes the creation of fairy-tale and perfectionist atmosphere in landscape design, amusement facilities and performance activities. When interacting with LinaBell, it is not easy to understand LinaBell, because she cannot speak and can only express herself with her body. But it is in this little speculating and communication that visitors are able to fully immerse themselves in the conversation with the fairy tale characters and give feedback accordingly. This is a kind of resonance based on participatory culture, and it is also the golden sign that supports the core of Disney's standing fairy tale world. LinaBell's personified performance in Disney is the key to the doll becoming a "female star". For example, LinaBell does not like to be called "Er er", but when a visitor calls her "er er", she will cover her ears with her hands and wave her hands to show that she does not like this name. When asked "What do you like to be called", she would point and open her palm and count out four words;They flash their lightsabers when confronted with rude tourists and refuse to take photos. When confronted with rude visitors, they will take out their lightsabers and refuse to take photos. LinaBell shows the emotions that people have, and is not limited to cuteness, but also character, creating rich characters. Personified performances that are highly consistent with the character's characteristics are key to creating an immersive interactive experience for fans.

Microblog topics
Since LinaBell came out, any topic related to her quickly appeared on the trending searches. The hashtag # LinaBell has been viewed 470 million times and discussed 3. 239 million times so far. There are more than 50,000 notes about LinaBell on XiaoHongshu platform. Related topics have been played 450 million times on Douyin. Driving new IP requires not only innovative marketing but also traffic. LinaBell's popularity relies on the traffic of the entire Internet, creating a clash of topics to attract netizens to express their opinions. Through the manufacture of topics, such as "who is the first Disney star", "LinaBell and Megatron", "LinaBell does not like to be called er er", "LinaBell no physical nail","Stellalou two big female stars with the same frame force break discord rumors", arouse the audience hot debate, and then improve attention and attract traffic.

Short video dissemination
A large number of short videos shot of LinaBell mainly focus on the video content of "LinaBell ", and are released and disseminated on social platforms such as microblog and Douyin short videos of more than a dozen short video creators such as Disney veteran players, Ghost Disney Atmosphere Group, and Italian Travels. Without film and television animation and stories, LinaBell only became popular with some fragmented, short videos and emoticons with no storyline or even out of context. After the cracking spread of short videos and various social platforms, she became the queen of traffic at one shot. The popularity of LinaBell on the Internet can also be noted through the transmission characteristics of short videos. Compared with the social software which takes text and voice as the main carrier, the immersive feeling created by short video is very strong through the coordination of picture and sound. Messengers in Media decode symbols to users through short videos, and form emotional connections with users, such as performing large movements and other physical symbols. From offline interaction to online screen brushing, from fixed scenes to electronic scenes, from backstage to foreground, empowered by the Internet and from the plane character setting, LinaBell slowly becomes vivid and three-dimensional.

Star Effect
The star effect is indispensable to LinaBell's popularity. On September 29, the day the dolls went on sale, celebrities posted pictures of themselves with LinaBell on social media platforms. Other celebrities mimicked LinaBell 's winking pose during their livestream. Celebrities bringing goods is conducive to enhancing brand awareness, using fan effect to increase publicity, and pursuing the maximum effect in the market.

Emotional healing
People bear emotional alienation from each other, both in the context of times of social transformation and in the realistic context of atomization trends. Zygmunt Bauman writes in Globalization: Human Consequences: "To be modern is to find ourselves in situations that promise ourselves and the world adventure, strength, joy, growth and change, but at the same time threaten to destroy what we have, know and all. "The atomized urban life, the overwhelming flood of information,generalizes the modern sense of self-deficiency into thin air. The pressure of reality makes people carry heavy burdens, but LinaBell in Disney World goes to work and business in fine spirit every day. She gives a warm response to every audience, full of vitality and vitality. No matter in the back of LinaBell and cast and crew,the vitality and beauty of the adult world do not have the most incisive performance. This generation of young people get a cure for their tired life from the energetic and vigorous role of dolls. This is also an important reason why cute culture is so popular. For example, the phenomenon of blind box pumping nowadays is more a kind of emotional consumption. The actual usefulness of objects has been weakened, but more emotional and spiritual satisfaction is needed to comfort the exhausted mind. At this age, I still miss the role of the doll, perhaps because I always want to be a childlike innocence to find all things lovely, live a gentle and transparent cute and interesting adult.

Summary
The popularity of the LinaBell doll character is a microcosm of Disney's layout super IP. An IP that is out of the background of a story can gain competitiveness by relying on cute images and social media, which shows how high the market acceptance of independent IP is. But the key to ensuring that traffic translates into retention is the constant development of characters. As for the once popular old IP, but now can not be on the float, how to reinvigorate brand advantages, overall planning of the vitality of the IP universe, Disney should also think about. Of course, the existing idol market has sounded the alarm for Disney, should not fall into the model of assembly line star-making.