Disney Publishing Wins Best of Show

And the winners are ... Disney Publishing Worldwide and The Display Connection Inc., creators of the Disney Publishing Permanent Spinner Rack. On Oct. 4, the spinner rack was named the Best of the Times winner in the Design of the Times 2000 competition at The P-O-P Show/New York.According to executives at Disney Publishing, the display has received the solid response at retail that the company was looking for. "The great thing about this display is that it has a very Disney feel to it," says Diane Cain, associate director of marketing. "When you see it and then spin it, you become a part of the display and you really get that Disney magic feeling. We're very happy that, in the end, that feeling was conveyed."Disney Publishing Worldwide, a global division of the Walt Disney Co., Burbank, Calif., publishes books and magazines in 74 countries. In the U.S., the company publishes several lines of books under one of four imprints: Disney Press, Disney Editions, and Hyperion Books for Children and Jump at the Sun (for non-Disney branded titles), and also licenses a full range of Disney books with other publishers. The New York-based company employs more than 500 people worldwide. Along with Cain, the team at Disney Publishing that worked on this program included: Debbie Nassayan, senior manager, print purchasing; Gina Balsano, promotion planner; Susan Saroff, creative director in the Burbank office; and Ken Geist, global creative director.The program began with a simple need: "We wanted there to be a real focal point for this line of books," says Cain. "It's hard to get a Disney shelf in stores, so we wanted a central place where people could go in a bookstore and find Disney books. We wanted to create something that could be seen across the store. You can see this P-O-P display with its mouse ears sticking up above everything else and be drawn to the products."According to Nassayan, the process took about a year from start to finish. "When we set our goal, we went to some of our current vendors and also did a search out to other vendors that we knew were creating permanent displays. We wanted them to come up with concepts," she says. "In the end we chose The Display Connection. What really got everyone here was their idea for the mouse ears. How simple -- and that says everything about our company. From there, our creative people added to the design with elements such as the shadow box and the movement of the characters' heads. We had a think tank with them on what we wanted and needed from a display."Manual MotionThe Display Connection, based in Moonachie, N.J., produces custom P-O-P displays in a variety of mediums including corrugated, plastic, wood and wire in its 90,000-square-foot facility. It offers both design and manufacturing services including die-cutting, rubber-plate printing, permanent assembly, litho-mounting, plastic fabricating, co-packing and full finishing capabilities. "We do all designing and engineering in-house, from concept through blueprinting," says Richard Urso, president. "We operate a sheet plant for the printing, die-cutting and mounting of corrugated. We also get involved in all different permanent materials and do the permanent assemblies, including a variety of different types of racks." Most of the company's temporary materials are manufactured in-house. "We subcontract a lot of componentry on the permanent side, but we do about 90% of the assembly and final stages of the permanent projects in-house."The Display Connection had designed a permanent rack unit for Disney Publishing four years ago that was very successful. "When they decided to come out with a new version of it, they contacted us," says Urso. "Our designers looked at what we had and evaluated what we would be able to reuse from the old unit, as well as what we could do to make the new unit more exciting. One of the features the marketing team at Disney had asked for was some sort of interactive element, but we really didn't want to get involved in anything that needed to be plugged in because of placement limitations. Batteries were also ruled out because of the long-term life expectancy of the unit. So we came up with this manual motion idea. When you turn the unit, the characters at the top do a dance. Everyone loved the idea. We designed the mechanism in the header that allows that to happen."Urso says that his designers went through three rounds of computer sketches, with the original ones done on a Mac system and the engineering phases done on a CAD system. The company has three designers in the concept area, one in permanent engineering and three in temporary engineering. "In the design phase, there was a team of two people working on it. They did three rounds of sketches that had four or five different original ideas. Those were then narrowed down to two that Disney had interest in."When the final unit's product layout and capacity was decided on, the designers at The Display Connection started concentrating on the elements that would make the unit attractive to children."Once the final sketch was selected, the engineering and project management people took over and did the blueprinting and sourcing of outside materials," Urso says. "There was quite a variety of materials including injection-molding, extrusions, a structural tube and particleboard for the base. The header is injection-molded and vacuum-formed. We also used die-cut plastic and some heat-bending." Urso says his company built a quarter-scale model of the unit and then a full-size working prototype before it went into production. All of the final assembly was done in-house.Dimensionally and mechanically, Urso says, the unit looks like the first version, but it went through a couple of generations of different graphic treatments. The Disney marketers' perspective, however, is different. "The old display had shelves that extended out from the display," says Cain. "We received some reports from stores that kids wanted to climb up it, so we recessed the shelves back into the unit. Also, our riser is completely different with the shadow boxes, the movement and the ears. There's a lot more going on with this unit.""The only things that we actually borrowed from the old one were the molds for the shelving, because the books are the same size, and maybe the footprint," adds Nassayan.The unit was created for bookstores and various non-traditional locations such as supermarkets and mass merchants. It holds Disney's current line of children's books. "We expect it to stay in stores for quite a while since it can be refilled," says Cain. "It's up to the retailer and our sales reps to take care of restocking. Out of 1,000 units produced, almost all were placed. They're all across the country and in parts of Canada."One of the display's strongest aspects is its versatility, adds Cain. "This unit gave us the opportunity to market different kinds of books because we made it very versatile." She says that at least 200 books can be merchandised on the display. When retailers buy the original standard assortment of titles, they are offered the display. Set up is minimal -- the shelves and the books have to be placed. All of the shelves can be adjusted so the retailer can put any size book on them. Also, there are baskets on two sides at the bottom where retailers can put non-shelvable items. "We have had some incredible feedback on how useful it is," says Cain."What makes it a successful unit to the consumer is that it is fun-looking, child-friendly, easy to shop, and it has a little surprise element with the movable characters," adds Urso. "From a production point of view, I think the way we were able to utilize some existing tooling and incorporate color changes so that it didn't look the same as the original unit, helped us cost-effectively produce it. We used some of the injection-molded tooling from the first unit as well as some of the extrusion tooling, which helps keep the tooling costs probably half of what they would have otherwise been."The target audience for this unit was both parents and their children. "We're looking at parents who are selecting books for their children, but we also wanted to make the display attractive to kids," says Cain. "That's why we like the movable heads -- because kids will come over and spin the unit, which starts the spinning movement. We knew that it would attract the kids, and then the parents would come over to see what their kids were doing."We put a lot of thought, time and effort into this display," continues Cain. "There are some small touches that we especially like, such as Tinkerbell at the top of the riser who is dropping pixie dust down the side. These were the touches that we were committed to."

Disney Publishing Wins Best of Show

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI

Related Images

Business Topic

Market Segment