Pirates of the Caribbean's Ubiquitous Marketing

Weeks and weeks before Johnny Depp made it to the big screen in this year's Pirates of the Caribbean adventure, Walt Disney's ubiquitous marketing was building excitement for the brand franchise.

One clever partnership was with Pirate's Booty, a snack with "healthy" marketing overtones. In stores that carry Pirate's Booty, limited-edition packages were faced out on end caps and other high-profile locations to showcase on-package tie-ins to the new Disney movie.

Disney is also using Yahoo! ads and links to trailers. When Disney put a link to the official trailer on Yahoo! in December, it attracted 2.4 million views in the first 24 hours.

Not coincidentally, the latest LEGO catalog arrived yesterday, featuring the official Pirates of the Caribbean sets on the cover and in spreads inside. If you visit LEGO's dedicated Pirates page, you'll see that the graphics echo Disney's movie graphics.

Of course Disney has a Facebook presence for the new movie. As of opening day, that page had more than 5.4 million "likes." With the big Memorial Day movie-going weekend only days away, the marketing has successfully created an atmosphere of anticipation and generated lots of discussion about the movie (and more). Arrrrrgh.