My daughter turned the corner of a store in Disney World and her eyes went wide.

“It’s Judy! And Tricky Nicky!”

She was talking about a small display with a hodge podge of stuffed character toys.

After a full week at Disney, this was probably the first time we stumbled across any merch from Zootopia (for the uninitiated…it was Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, the movie’s two main characters).

Addy’s joy pulled some attention toward the display and you know what someone said?

“Zootopia merch! That movie is great, it deserves more love here.”

Disney World (and the company at large) has mastered the art of playing the hits. They know exactly what’s most likely to get attention and drive sales off the back of their vast library of content.

And apparently Zootopia was never really on the list. Not much merch to speak of. No characters to meet across the park (trust me, our daughter would have found them).

Just a miscellaneous display of toys in one store and a couple of small character appearances in a parade.

That movie came out in 2016. So, 7+ years later, it would make sense if Zootopia just sort of faded into the Disney background.

And yet, the resurgence is strong (not just because of that one random moment).

Suddenly, Disney has announced a Zootopia sequel and an entirely new section of a park dedicated to the movie.

Instead of fading into the background, it turns out Zootopia is a late-blooming hit.

Okay, so what does any of this have to do with you and your work?

It’s easy to take a short-term view of your content. You post that big new idea on social, you watch the reactions like a hawk, and decide if it was a success or not.

Was it a hit? Double down. Heard crickets? Move on.

But you never know what could turn into a hit later with some reframing or repetition.

Not every Disney movie can be Frozen — the billion-dollar hit that took child pop culture by storm.

And not every one of your ideas is going to become a coined term and spread like wildfire right off the bat.

Sometimes, you might have a late-blooming Zootopia on your hands. And all it takes is some persistence to spread the world on that slow burn.

Playing the hits with your content doesn’t mean saying the same thing over and over and over again. But it does mean orienting yourself around a few core beliefs and finding different ways to frame them and put them at the core of new content.

This is really the crux of the content repurposing movement — playing the hits instead of constantly trying to churn out brand new ideas.

A few questions to ask yourself when building a content strategy that’ll generate some late-blooming hits:

• What’s our content mission statement (the core belief that sits at the center of everything we produce)?

• What are some different angles we can use to approach the same idea? (Tell a story, make an observation about current trends, explain in past vs. present terms, explain what everyone gets wrong about the idea, etc.)

• How can we get our key stakeholders sharing their unique perspectives about our core beliefs?

• Which customers can we introduce to our ideas as a test for whether or not the concept might resonate with a broader audience?

The truth is that you never really know what your hits are going to be — and you don’t know when exactly they might take off.

Give your audience more chances to consume those big ideas. And don’t be afraid to repeat yourself — keep playing the hits while you mix in some new experiments.

— Joe Michalowski

Featured content

The Power of Podcasting in Marketing

It may be hard to believe, but we’re still in the early days of podcasting. What may seem like a massively saturated market is actually still pretty young — and there’s a ton of room for growth. It’s why everyone in the Marketers in Demand network is bullish on podcasting for businesses.

The point isn’t that you’ll become the next Serial or “insert your favorite massive podcast here.” Even a small podcast can become an incredible engine for your company’s marketing — listen to Ben and Eric talk about how.

Thrilled to see Justin Simon come on as a guest in the Marketers in Demand network. Justin is constantly beating the drum for repurposing content and has a lot of incredible ideas about doing it efficiently and consistently. Listen in and get some lessons about getting more out of your content.

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— Joe Michalowski

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