Easter Eggs and Disney movies: when marketing meets animation

Easter is coming and everyone is looking forward eating the colorful chocolate eggs… And maybe you don’t know…but they are not just food, but a real marketing strategy. No, stop: of course I’m not referring to chocolate eggs, rather to the creative tools used by marketers in products/services to create bridges to other ones. And we cannot better describe this technique without referring to Disney movies. Indeed everyone knows about the famous allusions in Disney movies. And we have to admit: each of us tried at least once in their lives to find them watching the movies of the American company over and over.

The Easter Egg – a marketing tool

Maybe you might think it’s just a casuality or rather a normal tribute done by the animators in their cartoons. But easter eggs are actually marketing tools. But what are they? Why are they called in this way?

In marketing terms, easter eggs are inside jokes and hidden messages to recall other products or services. The name comes from the Easter egg hunt, coined to described the customer experience looking for them. So we can imagine Disney Company as the rabbit that scatters its colourful eggs everywhere and customers are the egg hunters. A customer experience that always works: watching Disney movies is not just passive activity, but for the fanatic fans it becomes a real treasure hunt.

This marketing tool is very particular and quite effective, this because it can influence consciously or unconsciously the mind of the watchers. Indeed , our brain may be able to immediately recognize the images and associate it with a past experience (for example an other movie already watched). And when we see that “Oh, there is Scar in Hercules!!” or, become very famous, “There is Goofy in the Little Mermaid”.

Easter Eggs: subliminal messages and neuroscience

But the majority of this easter eggs are so hidden that we are not able to notice them at all. And here the real challenge begins. Indeed, even if we are not able to see them, our brain can. It’s here we start talking about them as “subliminal messages”.

Maybe you can say “Easter eggs are always subliminals, both consciously and unconsciously.” It’s not completely true. This because when you are perfectly able to notice, for example, Scar, we can’t talk about subliminal messages because your “conscious part” can capture it. On the contrary, subliminal messages arise when we are not focus on that detail, but anyway our brain is able to record the information and elaborate it. Consequently, it perfectly acts as subliminal message because it passes below our normal limit of perception. And it’s quite common with Easter Eggs considering movies frames last just one second.

Of course these messages are not so strong to create dependence or other inductive actions, but they enforce probably our personal connection to that specific movie or brand features. Indeed, Easter Eggs in Disney pictures don’t promote just other films, but they also embody animators’ and corporate information. Let’s consider for example Bolt's medal showing the Walt Disney Animation Studious address or in Ralph Wreck It, on the game display there is the birth date of Walter Disney (December,05,1901).

Summing up, Easter eggs are used as promotional and celebrative tools, not only by Disney – in fact, the primacy is up to the Atari videogame Adventure that encouraged players to find further hidden messages in later games. It’s a genial way for firms to promote their products inside the products themselves. If it’s not creativity, I don’t know how to call it. Everybody likes it, especially for finance departments that hear the magic words…it’s for free!

When we say marketing is in the details. Good hunt!