Advertising Your Company at Disneyland Japan!

Posted By Nathan Hoernig

The Ultimate Advertisement

As a company with a product to sell, nothing’s better than putting your company name in front of a guaranteed hundreds of thousands of people in one given day. Moreover, if you can make an impression upon those people in an environment designed to bring happiness to its patrons, those positive emotions and experiences will become (at least a little?) synonymous with your company’s brand.

What better place than Tokyo Disneyland?

The following are how some advertisers make their mark by using Tokyo Disney’s atmosphere of happiness and enjoyment to show their companies in a positive, fun and energetic way. Brand development and marketing at its best!

UCC Coffee

UCC Coffee’s angle (the header image of this blog) comes in the form of (believe it or not), a coffee shop! Center Street Coffeehouse is actually more of a restaurant, but at least UCC was able to tie it into their key product.

What’s really interesting is that the coffee shop is designed in a 1920s/30s style. UCC Coffee was founded in 1933: nice way to make a connection.

Meiji

Meiji-Sweetheart-Cafe-Image

Meiji is a chocolate and sweets company. It only makes sense that they would sponsor the Sweetheart Cafe to emphasize the sweetness of their product and cater to the “sweet tooths” of children across Japan.

Actually, contrary to the impression and tastes of many, Disneyland in Japan is a hotspot for couples, especially those in their twenties. If a company’s target demographic involves twenty-somethings, Disneyland is a good place to advertise despite its “young” image in other countries. Meiji manages to hit that angle by encouraging “sweethearts” and “sweets” to coincide together.

The Cafe mainly serves breads, pastries, cakes and cookies as well as drinks.

Panasonic

Panasonic-Monsters-INC-image

Panasonic’s contribution to Disneyland comes in the form of a Hide & Go Seek style attraction. While one may argue that the electric element of the ride is what makes the ride a good sponsor for Panasonic, that would pretty much validate its sponsorship of any ride throughout the park.

Nonetheless, putting the company name in front of thousands of families in line for the ride is an undeniably good way to encourage those parents to choose Panasonic next time their in the market for a new television.

Yamazaki

yamazaki-eastside-cafe-image

yamazaki-eastside-cafe-image

Similar to the UCC Coffee-sponsored Center Street Coffeehouse as above, the Eastside Cafe is also a family restaurant and also set in an early 20th century style. It’s more of an italian restaurant than anything else. According to some sources on the web, it’s also a bit more expensive and less crowded than Center Street Coffeehouse.

The sponsor, Yamazaki Baking Co., Ltd, is actually a bread and pastry company though the association isn’t as obvious as some of the others. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Yamazaki, they are the distributors of Nabisco products (think Oreo and Ritz) in Japan.

Kirin

kirin-pirates-of-the-caribbean-image

Picture this, a watery ride through haunted manmade caves, complete with fairy tale dangers and beer-guzzling animatronic pirates throughout. Now consider the sponsor, Kirin Holdings Co., Ltd., who’s a beverage company that specializes in, sure enough, beer. As a producer of beer, finding an attraction to sponsor could potentially be difficult, but not at Disneyland.

Kirin is sponsoring the Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit.

One might be wondering why Disney would allow an alcohol-related company to sponsor a ride at a kid-oriented theme park. An important note, however, is that Kirin also produces a variety of other non-alcoholic beverages as well; it’s just that they’re best know for the beer. Moreover, as mentioned above, not all the park-goers are children and a reasonable amount of marketing is spent targeting other age groups.

NTT Docomo

docomo-float

NTT Docomo is one of the top cell phone and communication companies here in Japan. It sponsors a variety of parades at Disneyland including the “Happiness is Here” Parade which I was able to catch in the spring. This is another (arguably?) disconnected sponsorship, but is one of the most visual as the roads are lined with droves of people watching the parade. Signaling the end is the float with the logotype. Again, timed placement after a parade: what better timing to catch the positive spirits of park attendees?

Unisys

unisys-float

Unisys is an IT company that mainly provides its services to other businesses. It’s one of the only companies in this group whose sole business is B2B as opposed to consumer-based.

At Disneyland in Tokyo, Unisys sponsors the Electrical Parade at Disneyland in Tokyo. While definitely not as intense in scale as some of the other floats in the Electrical Parade, Unisys’ float follows the same marketing technique as the above-mentioned NTT Docomo float by “cashing in” on the positive emotion and spirits right as the parade is finishing up. While the attendees in the evening aren’t nearly as numerous as the afternoon parades, there are still plenty of people to make an impression on.

Coca-Cola

coca-cola-refreshment-corner-tokyo-disney-image

What would Disney advertising be like without international giant Coca-Cola getting a taste of the action? The Refreshment Corner is sponsored by Coca-Cola.

Keep cool or keep warm, it’s one of not all that many restaurants/resting spots that has both outdoor and indoor seating. It’s also far enough off from the main area that it’s not completely flooded with people while still having a killer view of the Disney castle. It’s also pretty close to the entrance so would make for a very good meeting spot if you lose track of your party! Who knew Coca-Cola was so concerned about your well-being!

Fujifilm

fujifilm-photo-spot-tokoy-disney-image

A camera company sponsoring ideal photo spots…not rocket science to make that association.

This is actually a pretty cool feature sponsored by Fujifilm. If you didn’t know about it, you can find “Photo Spots” all over the park. They’re curated spots that provide the “perfect backdrop” for a Disney photo. Keep an eye out if you want to impress your friends into thinking you’re a skilled photo taker.

Just don’t complain to us when they start asking you to take photos of their baby for free!

…And of Course!

humblebunny-bathroom-tokyo-disney-image

Had to save the best for last. Humble Bunny: strategic marketing at its best.

Why the bathrooms you ask? Simple. It’s the only sign in the park that everyone will have looked for at least once (more likely two, three or four times), and we’re big fans of the “multiple impression” theory of advertising/brand marketing.

More about Disney Sponsorship

To read up on some more about Disney’s long list of sponsors (and we’re sorry we couldn’t feature all of them!), please check out the link below. Disney has two theme parks here in Japan so you should check out the left side navigation which mentions DisneySea as well.

We’ve made our mark on Disney (as evidenced by the photo above*). How about your company?

List of Disneyland Sponsors

* The validity of said photo has not been professionally verified or ascertained, nor does it represent the support of Humble Bunny by Disney.

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