Once Upon A Time, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse was regarded as an icon of worldwide mass marketing. But the changing times forced the Walt Disney company to alter its tactics, and embrace the concept of selective marketing, so in 1994, the company's Mouseworks Division was mandated to establish a new publishing niche: mass merchandiser-priced children's books, designed and priced to move fast in a high-speed selling environment--the discount chain toy departments.

The corporation already had long-standing licensee agreements with of number of children's book publishers, but it had decided to organize its own publishing arm in the children's book category. The division was organized to serve the digital inventory-controlled world of Target, Kmart, and Wal-Mart.

Things were definitely starting to click for the Mouseworks Division, but the group needed help from professionals from outside the "mouse house" to ensure that all bases were covered, specifically, a firm experienced in selective marketing practices.

They hired my firm smart communications, Inc. to help them accomplish their goals for the children's book line. In addition to our success in this area, we were a small firm, a decided advantage to a corporation the size of Disney, which needed to discreetly infiltrate a new market.

Smaller firms, such as mine, often can more easily navigate the intensely competitive waters populated by major corporations. In short, Mouseworks needed us to create demand among the toy department category managers at the discount mass merchandiser national chain stores.

Our test bed title was Snow White, whose release was intended to coincide with the multimillion-dollar limited-edition rerelease of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in home video. This launch was to be a proving ground for the power of a Disney "event" and its concomitant capability to drive add-on sales for the mass merchandise market--our target market. Given the Mouseworks Management GroupÕs tight media budget, my media team at SMART quickly discerned that the best approach was a direct one, to the discount chain store toy department managers; that is, the category managers of mass merchandisers such as Target, Kmart, and Wal-Mart. Mouseworks agreed.

Going in, we knew we had brand name awareness in our favor. In July 1994, the advertising agency Young & Rubicam had released the results of its Brand Asset Valuator study that charted the value of 6,000 brands in terms of relevance, familiarity, differentiation, and esteem throughout 19 countries. As reported in Adweek, "Among the highest-ranked properties globally was the Disney brand, which managed to transcend both national borders and age group demographics as a highly familiar, relevant, differentiated, and esteemed property."

Going against us, however, were two equally challenging opponents, one from inside and one from outside: Inside: At this point in time, interdivisional rivalry was at an all- time high at the Walt Disney Company. Division heads were under tremendous pressure to perform, and the Mouseworks group was no exception. Thus, "official" collaboration with other divisions was not a possibility. The Katzenberg and Eisner factions were at all out war with each other.

Our target market, the discount chain toy department managers, were reluctant to "rock the boat" by dealing directly with Disney, as many of them had ongoing successful relationships with distributors of Disney products. Furthermore, many had experienced or had heard about previous--failed-- attempts by Disney to deal directly with mass merchandisers in other product categories, and did not want to take a chance with Mouseworks' book line.

Once we recognized that we would not be getting a leg up from other Disney divisions, we knew we had to focus hard on our second objective: profiling our target market carefully and completely. SMART's first tasks, then, were to identify and determine how to reach the this small, fast-moving, and hard-to-hit market. Identifying who these people were was the easy part.

Here are the demographics we identified for discount chain store toy department managers: They number approximately 1,500 individuals nationwide. They are generally high-energy, 20-something go-getters living in a world of licensed toys and Saturday morning television. They work "on the move," attending meetings and traveling in the field, buying for regions or groups of mass merchandiser retail megastores.

They think and speak of "footprints," the number of square inches of floor space a given point-of-purchase display will require, and how much revenue the given item will earn in the f ootprint. Although there is no member organization for category managers, these professionals belong to one or more toy industry organizations. They track vigilantly the information published in trade publications such as Discount Store News. They are continuously bombarded with new product deals and pitches, and therefore are not easy to impress.

Most important, we learned that, in the toy category, children's books are a low-interest item, and thus, direct sales efforts generally fall upon deaf ears, Disney characters notwithstanding. Clearly, we couldn't do anything to change the politicking then going on inside Disney, and thus get the help of other divisions to promote the Mouseworks titles; neither could we afford to sit back and count on the power of the Disney name in this fast-forward arena.

Our research indicated that Mouseworks would have to get out in the field and prove the merits of its brand products just like everybody else. Our first move was make use of the category managers' involvement with the toy industry organizations; this link provided a viable grapevine for disseminating information--which we promptly began to do.

The first Mouseworks press release to the mass merchant retailers read, "Disney is the closest thing to a guaranteed sale," and went on to tout Disney's trademark characteristics of energy, quality, and creativity, citing the sales generation power of [such titles as] "101 Dalmatians," "Aladdin,' "Beauty and the Beast,'" and others. This was a good beginning, but hardly enough to compel wary and sales-savvy category managers to deal directly with Disney, for many of these pros we interviewed alluded to Disney "talking the talk but not walking the walk" on the back end of the sale.

Specifically, our selected target, the toy department managers, wanted to know: Is the product on the planogram? Does the vendor have up-to-the-minute electronic data interchange capabilities? Is Saturday morning television support in place? At what spending level? What's the "pull-through?" Are there movie tie-ins?

The electronic technology revolution has changed the playing field. But at that point, Disney ads in Discount Store News did not even include a toll-free phone number. And there were no cross-promotions to home video and children's furniture categories, elements strongly advocated

Although at the outset they were unprepared in the then-new high-tech world of electronic marketing techniques, Mouseworks staff hit the floor running. They utilized planogram shelf space management programs and just-in-time inventory control. Mouseworks trade advertising efforts raised awareness for Mouseworks when direct sales reps came to call. Slowly but surely, Mouseworks made it into the mass booksellers.

But mass merchandise discount retailers were still playing hard to get. And though Mouseworks kiosks were being placed and were generating some business, they were not being serviced rapidly enough to suit the quick-turn demands of the category managers.

So Mouseworks put its executives on the road to do store checks and shelf detailing. A volume pricing schedule was established that worked on a sliding scale with options for nonreturnable terms. SMART initially suggested targeting retail buyers of the Snow White video for a surefire add-on sales opportunity. The objective was to build direct distribution relationships with the video buyers as well as the toy buyers within the mass merchandising universe. We believed that if the Mouseworks kiosks were located near the video racks, the books would become an impulse purchase.

This concept was given the thumbs-down from both Disney and the mass merchandisers, who contended that Snow White would just "have to fight it out" in the toy department alongside every other children's book title.

SMART' s objective then evolved to build a Mouseworks franchise, which would accomplish two essential goals: Prevent confusion of the Mouseworks imprint with that of licensee Crown Books, which already marketed Disney titles. Commandeer valuable floor space to enable maximum impact and room for tie-in product display.

Critical to achieving these goals was a stand-alone display area that would make it possible for the Mouseworks books to be shelved "cover up" instead of "spine up," the traditional display format for mass-merchandised children's books. Further, this display would enable the proper positioning of smaller tie-in titles featuring foil-stamped, pop-up, and "squeeze me" inserts. Mouseworks' intent was that the tie-in products would be near, or preferably next to, their flagship book for maximum impact--to successfully "piggyback" with the Snow White video launch.

These objectives were easier said than accomplished, however, because all our selected targets cared about was that every square inch of selling space in their respective departments feature products that would, performance-wise, stack up against perennial favorites including Barbie, Thomas the Tank Engine or Hot Wheels.

To them, it was not a foregone conclusion that because Disney was spending $8.5 million to launch the Snow White video, sales of Mouseworks' Snow White book would make it a slam dunk worthy of premium floor space consideration.

SMART quickly recognized that to motivate these reluctant decision makers--our selected target --we had to sell the idea of Snow White titles as the product, not the Mouseworks imprint as the product. After all, it was Snow White who had been a best-seller long before Barbie and Hot Wheels were even a gleam in Mattel's eye. The title had a history of success that predated Saturday morning children's programming--indeed, even television itself. Simply put, when it came to best-sellers, Disney wrote the book. And that's precisely the point SMART drove home in the ads it placed for Mouseworks.

To complement the print ad campaign, Mouseworks designed a quick-to-assemble, small-footprint point-of-purchase display that could accommodate all the Snow White titles--covers up--including the "value-added line extensions" of the foil-stamped, pop-up, and squeeze-me books. This display proved to make such efficient use of valuable selling "real estate" that the trade embraced it enthusiastically.

Snow White was followed by her sibling characters in the enormously popular Lion King series, and Mouseworks was off and running.

Because interdivisional rivalry at Disney during the period SMART worked with the corporate giant was so intense and ingrained, we quickly realized that we would have to attack the project from "outside"; specifically, that we would have to find the information and support we needed from the target market itself--in this case, discount store toy managers.

Furthermore, it is imperative to learn how to talk to the trade effectively; because they are "insiders," they have seen and heard all the marketing claims and hype, and thus are more difficult to impress. They are also reluctant to "rock the boat," as we found when trying to convince them to deal directly with Disney, and to break long-standing distributor relationships.

Finally, they cannot be convinced to "sublet" valuable selling floor real estate based on brand name alone, even when that name carries the history and cachet of Disney. Mass merchandisers want to hear about price and value, and when you convince them your product offers those factors, category manager will generally give such items preferred, or power aisle locations, which can increase your product's sales by as much as 50 percent.