Cruella Social Media Marketing Plan: Executive Summary

Cruella is Disney’s most recent live-action film adaptation starring Emma Stone. The film serves as a prequel to the original 101 Dalmatians movie, telling the story of the infamous Cruella de Vil character. The highly-anticipated film was originally scheduled to launch in December of 2020, but was quickly pushed back to May 28th, 2021. Alongside a theatrical release, the movie will also be available on Disney+ for those who purchase Premier Access.

Campaign Goals

The social media strategy for the debut of Cruella will span across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and Letterboxd. The strategy will begin February 10th, one week before the first trailer drops, and will continue through all three phases of the release including pre-event, event, and post event. The main objective for this campaign is to create excitement for Cruella by increasing social engagement and in turn, generating revenue. To achieve this objective, the following SMART goals have been set:

• Achieve 10K shares/re-pins on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest before release date
• Create a trending sound for TikTok with 100K plays by release date
• Earn $1M in pre-ticket sales by release date
• Perform an opening box office weekend of $10M
• Increase Disney+ subscription count 50% by three months after release date
• Hit 500K mentions of #Cruella combined across all platforms by the end of the campaign

These goals will be measured with social KPIs across all platforms continuously, all the way through to post-event.

Audience, Voice, and Implementation

The target market for this campaign is Disney-loving females ages 20–35, who most likely saw the original film growing up. With a PG-13 rating, this film is not recommended for children, however, this campaign will still remain true to the overall Disney brand of creating magic and family fun. Cruella de Vil is an iconic character with an established identity to uphold. The voice for this campaign will match that of Cruella’s — mischievous, a bit mad, yet, absolutely fabulous.

The social marketing plan will begin February 10th, with the creation of @disneycruella accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. There will also be a Cruella homepage created on Letterboxd for release day. This intricate, multi-platform campaign will include pre-order opportunities, contests, inspiration, challenges, and influencers. Each platform will have its own content development plan throughout all three phases of release.

Campaign Highlights

Some of the key components of this campaign to foster engagement and boost revenue include:

• A link to pre-order movie tickets for opening weekend, through a partnership with AMC
• A link to pre-order Disney+ Premier Access, which will automatically download the film to the users account at 11pm the night of May 27th
• Main campaign hashtag: #Cruella
• A #cruellawatchparty contest on Instagram
• A Cruella-inspired Pinterest account with boards various boards including fashion, recipes, tutorials, movie posters, and fan art
• A TikTok challenge #serveforcruella, with the help of micro-influencer @jeremythetea
• A post-event Letterboxd review of the film by micro-influencer Karsten Runquist

Conclusion

The pre-event stage of the social media campaign will be crucial to the overall success of this release. In my opinion, engaging the audience and getting them genuinely excited is the best way to promote the event. The audience wants to feel seen and heard, they do not want to feel pushed into a sale. Therefore, formulating a social media campaign focused on engagement, will result in the best return on investment. With this in mind, I believe that Instagram and TikTok will be the most successful components of this marketing strategy. Both have large audiences and focus on user-generated content and engagement, making them ideal platforms for this campaign. Overall, I would consider this campaign strategy simply marvelous, darling!