Help Dissect These Strange Disney Ads
Filed under: Disney, Movie Marketing
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I'm all for creative advertising, but sometimes it blows my mind to see the stuff these giant firms approve of. Like have you seen that Heineken commercial where the kids are all singing in the cab and then the words "Let a stranger drive you home" appear on the screen. Yeah, that's exactly what I want to do Mr. Heineken -- I want to get trashed and let a total stranger drive me home. Thanks for the wonderful advice.
And then there's these ads featuring Disney characters that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense. Super Punch noticed them on the M&C Saatchi site labeled Travel & Tourism, and they apparently come from Buena Vista International. Each ad features a picture with the tagline "Life should be a bit more Disney" -- and I can kinda "get" it for two of the three, but what's up with the one that shows Prince Charming approaching a woman in a burka? Am I missing something here? Do these all make perfect sense to you? And if anyone out there knows what these are advertising, do let us know in the comments.
Check out all three images below.










Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-12-2009 @ 12:22PM
Stunbunny said...
Not to generalize but... wouldn't this action on Prince Charming's part get him, and possibly the woman, stoned to death, thrown in jail, in a serious amount of trouble? This seems like all kinds of wrong to me.
The one with the woman mopping the floor seems pretty perverse to me too. Life should be a bit more Disney but it's not. There are no fairy godmothers and people do have crummy jobs and crummy lives. The end.
The ads seem to suggest that you can escape your dreary existence when you live in a world of child-like fantasy. Kind of like Michael Jackson!
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6-12-2009 @ 12:23PM
Rebekah said...
I think they were trying to imply that Disney can remove unpleasantness--take away the harshness of your life. But I think the woman in the burka is a very...risky idea. The burka (in the west) does symbolize oppression, but in some countries it symobilizes religious oberservance. At once is seems too heavy and too careless. Would Prince Charming really be able to erradicate hundreds of years of cultural tradition?
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6-12-2009 @ 12:51PM
Mister B said...
These are just sooo WTF
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6-12-2009 @ 1:06PM
Farrison Hord said...
Prince Charming is meant to show how women in those countries SHOULD be treated. They get a pretty raw deal, Prince C. is what they should be getting but instead they get men who treat them like slaves and beat them like animals. It's not that hard to figure out.
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6-12-2009 @ 1:14PM
Morgan said...
First reaction: Creepy
Second Glance: wtf?
Final estimation: I feel bad for the mop woman, her fairy godmother's not doing anything for her. And Prince Charming, he wants out, that's why he's asking for directions. If that's what making life more "Disney" is all about than I'm happy to stay in reality.
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6-12-2009 @ 2:05PM
Charles said...
Really? You didn't get that the "stranger" in the beer commercial was a taxi cab driver? Sounds like perfectly sane advice to me.
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6-13-2009 @ 3:49AM
nelson said...
yeah, since when did hip, young 20-somethings count as kids who have little judgment enough to entertain "strangers driving them home/abducting them?"
lets see...would i rather have a beer company advocating responsibility and safe post-alcohol behavior, or more sex/explosions (clever as they are)?
in re: to the ads, yes. they're kind of...subversive if not uncouth.
6-15-2009 @ 9:44AM
Kevin said...
Agreed. That ad is great. Good song, cute girls, and a funny ass old guy singing along as he does his job. If the "drunks" in the cab had been throwing up and punching each other, then yeah, it would've been stupid. But the ad says to go out and have a great time with friends, knock back a few brews and then play it safe and take a cab home. Seems like a pretty sweet commercial for a beer company to me.
6-12-2009 @ 2:08PM
eSVee said...
So instead of seeming more inclusive by placing Disney in real world, or alternate world, situations-- it just makes it more ridiculous. The reasons the cartoons work is b/c they are in these 'hyper' real worlds. Placing them in the real work only intensify how fake they are.
And the deal with the burka is that is would be just as weird to see Mary Poppins walking into a Southern Baptist Church in an AD. Its not making a statement as much as it is just being weird. I mean, the deal is that it is a religious symbol and I could see it offending people who see "Westerners" as imposing their ways on them. I don't see the ad bridging any borders.
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6-12-2009 @ 7:05PM
Kate said...
I'm kind of not surprised at the balls it took to make these ads when they treat their own employees like crap. -.- There's a reason it's called Mousewitz.
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6-13-2009 @ 3:35AM
downtownblue said...
Fake. Totally fake because there is no longer a "Buena Vista Home Entertainment". It got renamed and repackaged a few years ago as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. Though, I really like the blue fairy. I mean, I wish I could be turned into a prince when I make copies in the office.
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6-13-2009 @ 3:46PM
Vik said...
Oh god, these are..tacky. Not to mention dangerously offensive. I mean, the Prince Charming ad doesn't suggest that he is opposed to the woman's burka itself, but still, pretty clumsy.
And the cleaning lady/Fairy Godmother one is insulting on so many levels. Apparently people having blue collar jobs don't have personal satisfaction and happiness in their lives. Nor should they be interested in providing better lives for their children and themselves by WORKING. Who needs things like self-satisfaction and self-dependency when the Fairy Godmother is here to gift you stuff like the lottery or Oprah?
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6-13-2009 @ 3:50PM
James Jakcson said...
Erik Davis... you can't actually be that dense. The complete stranger in the Heineken ads is a taxi cab driver... People are honestly that moronic and ready to get angry at things that they read subversion and perversion in to simple ad campaigns??? You know what you should be mad at... the crap that gets produced and excused as good photography and cinematography in these ad campaigns. The campaigns themselves are creative and usually engaging (though some companies do stick with them far too long, ie Geico), but the production values have constantly gone down. Now you critique two of the better production value campaigns out because you can't see the simplicity of saying "let a stranger take you home" or "make life a little more disney"... you don't deserve to critique anything.
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6-14-2009 @ 10:08PM
molly said...
i think that the fact that disney is taking such a serious approach to an ad campaign is a little off-putting.
disney is aimed at little kids, right? not adults who are aware of pollution.
fairy grandmothers won't come rescue maids who mop floors because maids who mop floors don't watch cinderella.
and as if the children who disney is intended for would even know what a burka is.
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6-15-2009 @ 3:36AM
Drew said...
Am I really the only one that gets the ad with the burka? The woman is Cinderella - she's surrounded by a world that treats her like crap. Realism be damned; there's no reason that the audience can't wish for a Prince Charming to come along in her case. After all, isn't Disney about "making dreams come true" and "when you wish upon a star" and all that jazz?
Some people might find it offensive, but in a way, it's sort of a noble statement.
Plus, these were out of the agency's Madrid office, so they were likely intended for Western audiences (in reply to the above poster about the viewers' attitudes towards burkas in general).
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6-15-2009 @ 4:41PM
Jonathan Kuhn said...
Unless it was edited after the comments, the post says "where the kids are all singing in the cab," so he knew it was a cab driver.
That said, I don't understand why you don't like that commercial. Well, I mean it's fine if you don't LIKE it, but what's wrong with its message?
"Let a stranger drive you home" is a clever way of saying "take a cab." That's all.
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