It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Marketing and advertising companies are already planning and strategizing for their clients. In the last two weeks Barney’s in New York unveiled a partnership with Disney and the use of their iconic characters for their holiday promotion, titled Electric Holiday.
In place of their normal bodies, the characters of Mickey, Daisy, Pluto and Minnie now resemble fashion models. They are tall with willowy legs and tiny waists. According to a Yahoo! article, Barney’s Creative Director, Dennis Freedman, human models were brought in to pose for the artist.
Some people are not too pleased. The comment sections of websites lit up with most saying they looked ridiculous even by cartoon standards.
Leah Baxley, a junior, understood what they were trying to do even if she didn’t like the result. “They are trying big time to modernize them,” she said, adding with a chuckle that she didn’t like it. “Maybe I’m a little bit biased because I’m used to old Mickey and Donald and Goofy. It’s kind of doing what, culturally, we do with everything. The itty bitty super skinny Goofy’s like buff all of the sudden.”
Graduate student Randy LaMarr felt differently. “I guess if it meets their audience’s criteria of what their looking for then graphically they did their job, right?”
While he was not offended by it like commentators online, he understood why some people might get upset. “We characterize characters…a lot of people are offended by it because they remember their childhood and these characters bring back fond memories of that.”
He doesn’t feel that it is “disgracing anything and there is no reason to be offended by it.”
As LaMarr pointed out, people associate the characters with fond memories. There is always a potential for negative fall-out when tampering with something with which people have emotional ties. Good or bad, the marketers did get one thing right: People are talking about it. And sometimes, getting people talking and standing out from the rest of the pack during the holiday season can make a huge difference for retailers.
