Celebrating a Disney Icon  

Innovative Store Setup to Celebrate a True Original  

The Problem

How do you celebrate the 90th anniversary of a ‘True Original’ like Mickey Mouse?

That was the challenge of Teresa Wong, at the time the Commercial Marketing Manager of Disney NZ, whose responsibility it was was to develop and design products with licensing partners for Disney’s brands.

Around the world, The House of Mouse was collaborating with local brands to create something special for Mickey’s 90th.

For New Zealand, Teresa couldn’t think of a better brand to partner with than Karen Walker an icon and “true original” in the fashion world.

It was a quarter of a second decision for Karen Walker to say yes, and the result was a 35 piece Mickey Mouse collection inspired by Karen’s magical childhood memories of visiting Disneyland.

One of the collection's highlights was, Mickey Mouse standing in place of Karen Walker’s iconic runaway girl.

With the collection under control, the next step was to launch it and, for that, Karen Walker allowed the Disney team to take over her Newmarket store.

Our Approach

Needing an innovative and experienced store setup to do Mickey’s 90th celebration justice, Teresa brought in Attain’s Alexandra Donaghy for ideation, execution and a store activation.

Having worked with Alexandra since 2012, she needed to come up with and pull off something innovative – as Mickey is a true original. “Alexandra has really good solutions, thinks outside the box and you can trust that she will deliver,” says Teresa.

An experiential store setup was a must, and the window was going to be a key feature. So, Alexandra worked with Teresa to develop a series of ideas that would be striking, and they could “Disneyify”.

The Solution

The initial moodboards for the window installation, included inspiration from “Mickey's Fun Wheel” on Pixar Pier. A beacon in the Disney world,  Karen loved it and instantly gravitated towards the concept, and, in fact, wanted an actual ferris wheel.

Alexandra went ahead and scoped and briefed a functioning ferris wheel. What started as a sculpture evolved into a fully functioning lit-up mechanical ferris wheel. Unfortunately, the cost to produce the this piece was expensive, and the team decided to invest the campaign budget to support a store execution to deliver a full Disney experience.

A new concept was quickly re-worked to fit the budget and still deliver something worthy of Mickey’s 90th.

They ended up building a giant neon Mickey head lit up in LED lights, which Alexandra worked on.

“Nothing is ever a problem for Alexandra, even working out crazy solutions,“ says Teresa.

Overview

Overall, the outcome was stunning.

You could see the Mickey sign from the end of the street, and at the opening launch, there was a queue all the way down it.

It was a phenomenal result for Disney – all of the sunglasses sold out – and the result exceeded forecast and projections.

Teresa highly recommends Alexandra – “you won’t regret it. She’s good in tricky situations and delivers one hundred times more than you’d expect.”

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