A Musical For Tweens Captures Its Audience - New York Times
Ben Sisario, February 8, 2006

    Ben Sisario examines the marketing strategy that went into Disney’s High School Musical and how it was able to engage its target audience with not-yet-standard techniques. The movie premiered on the Disney Channel on January 20th, and by February 8th it was already making news for its popularity. The soundtrack released with the movie reached top 10 of the Billboard charts, made 45 percent of its sales online through iTunes and had no radio airtime outside of Radio Disney’s station, and that was only in the first two weeks.
    Sisario quotes Gary Marsh, president of entertainment for Disney Channel Worldwide, as explaining the value of the story in its themes such as “express yourself, believe in yourself, celebrate your family, follow your dreams,” but it wasn’t just the optimism that made this movie and all of the other media associated with it into such a success. Because Disney’s presence exists across multiple forms of entertainment, it was able to use cross-platform advertising to build excitement about the movie before it was first aired. The show’s characters appeared on a New Years Eve show, the Disney channel played music videos from the movie’s songs “in heavy rotation,” and Disney even offered a free download of the song “Breaking Free” around the time of the premiere. After the movie aired for the first time, Disney directed viewers to a sing-along version online where they could download the lyrics. According to Sisario, the lyrics were downloaded 500,000 times in the first 24 hours. That’s successful cross-marketing.
    Disney capitalized on its integration of web content into the TV market, something that they’ve gotten very good at of late. They also benefited from the fact that the movie and soundtrack were released in the winter, specifically because of the holiday sales of iPods and iTunes gift certificates.
    Sisario sees this movie as the beginning of “a new musical phase,” referring to the previous cultivation of pop stars Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and the members of ’N Sync. They are creating a new generation of pop icons following the success of Hillary Duff, which began with her TV show “Lizzy McGuire.” The most interesting element of the movie and album’s success is the fact that it did not rely on traditional radio or MTV for its publicity. They know that their audience, because of their age, is very comfortable with the internet and digital music, so they were able to make use of their own website and their relationship with Apple’s iTunes to set the movie up for success.

Pang, Kevin

Chicago Tribune (IL); 2/02/2007

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    Ken Stromberg is the musical director for Palatine High School in Illinois. His decision to direct “High School Musical” caused a great deal of commotion, even before auditions had begun. The Disney Channel made-for-TV movie was extremely successful, with a chart topping soundtrack and a fan base as large as the number of 6 to 14 year old kids, and that’s just in America. Kevin Pang’s article exposes the craze that built up around this one high school’s performance of the now famous musical.
    It’s as pathetic as it is amazing: parents of children from far outside the school district started calling for tickets even before the actors had been cast or started rehearsing. The high school added two performances to their standard four and added 40 chairs to their theater for 600 (the most that the fire department would allow), but still the waiting list for tickets was long enough to fill the theater twice over.
    Although Pang spent most of his article quoting conversations between Stromberg and a slew of crazed parents and explaining to readers that High School Musical has become a pop culture icon to so many children, he found a few paragraphs to devote to describing just how Disney capitalized on their successful movie. Disney Theatricals Productions usually spends about a year adapting a movie to a stage play, but this one they were able to churn out in six months, tweaking some of the dialogue and adding two new songs. High schools all over the country rushed to get their hands on a licensed copy of the script as soon as it was available, and the play has revitalized many small theater groups who’d had trouble finding kids to audition and enjoy acting until it came along.
    Pang’s article is a valuable window into the fan culture surrounding this movie. The parents who felt a desperate need to get their children tickets to the show were responding to the enormous success of the movie in the eyes of their children. However it was that this movie managed to get everyone’s attention last year, it has certainly generated a lot more than just buzz, and Palatine High’s experience is certainly just one example of many.