My Digital Media Marketing Moment

Alright, I said I would post about my meeting with John, so I'm going to go ahead and do just that. In case you aren't sure who "John" is, I will remind you that he is a Digital Media Marketing Manager, which means that he is working in the hip, fast paced environment that I hope to one day enter. John is super cool! And not just because he left me my first blog comment ever. Mostly I think John is cool because, like so many of the castmembers I've met, he was very willing to put aside some time to sit down and chat with me. I always thought it would be REALLY difficult to get in touch with people working in your dream job department. Especially within Disney! But from my experience here, it seems like it's really just about asking. Even if you aren't working in an area with people in your career field, you never know who your managers and teachers know. You know what they say: ask and ye shall receive! 

 Anyways, our meeting was at his office in Celebration, so I got to visit Celebration for the first time. It seems like a pretty decent place to live and work. They have a Panera, a hospital, and some really nice Disney offices. I'm sure there's more to it than that but I didn't really go for a full tour.

I was told that when I arrived, I should park in one of the designated visitor parking spots. When I got there (20 minutes early) all of the visitor spots were full. They remained full for the ten minutes I spent circling. Eventually I just gave up and found a spot that it seemed like no one wanted underneath a low hanging tree. Then I awkwardly stared at the glass door into the building until the polite security guard within assured me I could just open it without using an ID.

My meeting was SO GREAT. Talking with John about what companies have been coming up with lately in social media spaces was interesting enough, but I also got to learn a little bit about the timing of Disney's appearances on social media platforms, and how they operate. For example, when something like Snapchat starts to gain ground, Disney is never the first corporate presence to show up. Usually, it's someone like Taco Bell leading the charge. Taco Bell is catering to a much more forgiving crowd, so they can afford to make some mistakes. Disney then learns from the mistakes and successes of other companies in order to figure out not only HOW Disney should present in this new space, but also IF they should really be in that space.

A lot of times, Disney also has some of the ground work done for them on spaces like Facebook or Pinterest. Since Disney usually comes onto the scene 6 months or so after everyone else, there is often already someone parked under the domain of "Walt Disney World" or "Disney". When digital media marketing reclaims that username,(yes, they take it back) they have all of the previous contributors content to study. This means they already have an idea of what people were sharing and liking from the pages in the past. It may sound silly, but likes can be important in this field, because the likes, comments, shares etc that something receives are sometimes the only way to show the link between what digital media marketing is putting out and how many guests are booking. At the end of the day, there has to be some sort of evidence that the digital media team is having an impact.

I also got to know the tentative date for Disney's Premier on Snapchat! But that's not really a secret anymore :)

Sorry about the wait! I promise more to come in the near future!