http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB114902904291766786-pEEJN21OoupMs8G55Bdr8H7KBVs_20060607,00.html?mod=regionallinks
Walt
Disney Co.'s latest marketing campaign in China features a nervy gambit: getting
consumers to help it weed out counterfeit products.
The company's "Disney Magical Journey" promotion, its biggest Chinese
marketing campaign of the year for consumer products, is a twist on the
traditional customer-loyalty program. To enter a contest for free Disney DVDs,
television sets and trips to Hong Kong Disneyland, customers peel a sticker off
a Disney product, attach it to a form, fill in a few personal details and mail
it in.
The catch: Only
legitimate Disney products carry the specific red hologram-covered stickers, in
a market rife with pirated Disney products that often are of similar quality to
the real thing.
Fighting these counterfeits is crucial for Disney. Sales of consumer products
-- such as stuffed toys and books -- make up the bulk of the company's business
in mainland China. Piracy has wiped out most legitimate sales of DVDs, while
government regulations bar much of the company's imported programming from being
shown in theaters and on TV.
Many products in China feature holograms to help retailers and government
officials differentiate legitimate products from counterfeits. But Disney's new
campaign is unique in that a consumer-products company is using a promotion to
enlist consumers in the process.
In-store ads across the 13 Chinese cities involved in the campaign and
regular broadcasts of Disney's "Dragon Club" variety-and-cartoon TV show
encourage children to make a game of "finding" the hologram stickers. "Here is
an original hologram sticker from Disney products," says one host on the show,
pointing to an oversize sticker featuring Mickey Mouse. "As long as you buy the
original products, you will get...a chance to win big prizes."
A second component of the campaign plays on 88, a lucky number in China, to
encourage customers to increase their Disney purchases. Consumers who spend more
than 88 yuan, or about $11, get additional coupons for legitimate Disney
products.
In the first three weeks of the promotion, which began April 21 and will end
Monday, the company received 250,000 entries for the anticounterfeiting contest
and has had to print more entry forms, says Ken Chaplin, Disney's Shanghai-based
vice president of retail sales and marketing.
Some customers have even called the company to alert it to retailers selling
products without the stickers, says Mr. Chaplin. The calls help Disney alert
those retailers selling pirated goods unwittingly that they aren't stocking
legitimate goods.
Mr. Chaplin won't say how much the company is spending on the campaign, but
he says it has paid for itself. Moreover, the information customers provide on
the entry forms helps Disney build its first big database of Chinese consumers
-- a prized asset and a challenge for many marketers in China.
How much success the contest will have in curbing the sale of counterfeit
goods remains to be seen. Some piracy fighters say the hologram stickers are a
flawed solution, because pirates can copy them, too.
China's biggest consumer-products marketer, Procter & Gamble Co., doesn't
even bother adding them to products. Shannon Young, the greater-China team
leader for brand protection at P&G, says he has yet to come across a
reasonably priced technology that can't be mimicked.
Disney's Mr. Chaplin says it would be very difficult and expensive to pirate
his company's holograms, because they are so technically advanced. But he adds
that Disney is at work on a technology that would let consumers send a message
on their cellphones with a number printed on the hologram to verify whether the
sticker -- and the product -- are legitimate.
