This year, our approach to Pixar’s brand presence on Instagram has been defined by two main goals: to showcase content that is uniquely Pixar, which could range from content created at the studio all the way to unique content formats that encapsulate the creative spirit of Pixar–and to create fan-forward moments for our audience, through direct UCG involvement as well as content meant to speak their language. We aimed to increase both fan following and the ability for fans at large to participate in the creation of Pixar-themed content to continually reinforce brand loyalty and interest.
We accomplished our goal of showcasing uniquely Pixar content this year in a variety of ways. First and foremost, we are very aware of the types of best-performing content on our accounts, so we make sure to prioritize programming beloved scenes from our films that resonate emotionally with audiences, that bring joy, or that give them an exclusive peek into the next big thing for Pixar. Outside of just exclusive scenes, we also want to ensure that we are providing content that fans won’t see anywhere else, like behind-the-scenes footage with talent like Anthony Gonzales getting the part of Miguel, or Jon Batiste providing reference footage for Joe, as well as formats like showcasing Easter eggs or bloopers, both of which contain information or footage exclusively from the Studio at large. And of course, every year we try to embody the creative spirit of Pixar through experimentation with new formats. Some favorites we explored this year included a unique musical mashup by a Pixar employee for Toy Story’s anniversary, a showcase of our Buzz Lightyear Balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade that brought in the other toys, a redecoration of a Pixar conference room for Lightning McQueen day, a foray into gamified content and much more!
On the side of focusing on the fans, we also made strides to accomplish this in ways we’ve never attempted before. While in the past we’ve had success reposting UCG (which we have continued to do), this year we experimented with using UCG to respond to larger conversations in ways our brand hasn’t been able to in the past, such as amplifying this creator’s opinion of Elio. We also made it a key part of our strategy to engage with fans/creators ; directly creating content like this and this, as a response to their suggestions, as well as giving fans a special thank you from some of their favorite artists. In addition, we wanted to make Pixar a part of the creator conversation at large, and were able to develop a process with our legal team this year that allowed for the use of this popular audio featuring Bachelorette star Gabby Windey. (This was so popular, it ended up getting covered by other media outlets.) This year our brand was also lucky enough to experience a surge of UGC content creation when the lizard from our new movie Hoppers unexpectedly went viral. The internet had fun creating memes of our lizard, and we didn’t want our brand to squash any of that, so when it came time to identify ourselves as the originator of the meme, we kept it simple and playful in a way that really resonated with the community.
Overall, our strategy this year revolved around wanting to make fans feel seen, providing fans with resources to evangelize our brand in the larger pop culture sphere, and to provide them with exclusive access to content that feels uniquely Pixar. This year, we saw a 2% increase in followers on our Instagram, continuing to broaden our scope to new followers. But for our existing followers, we saw close to a 40% reduction in negative sentiment comments on Instagram posts in comparison to last year–meaning our fans are resonating with our content on an overall more positive level.
The meme-ification of our character Tom across Instagram was also a notable accomplishment in the larger pop culture space. While this was a fan-led effort, our team capitalized on user generated content through engagement, as well as creating content of our own to create a brand connection to our latest feature. Given the scope of how this Pixar content resonated across Instagram, we feel this was a wonderful opportunity to continue wading into larger conversations keeping Pixar top of mind, alongside our other efforts to create content that incorporated larger trends and memes on Instagram.
