Disney Is Harnessing The Power Of Influencers With Its ‘Disney Creators Lab’

Using influencers as part of a marketing strategy is nothing new in the age of social media and online influence. In fact, The Walt Disney DIS Company has been using influencers for the past few years to show off the latest happenings in its theme parks, movie studios, merchandise launches and more. Now Disney is turning to these influencers and fans to turn them to guide them and teach them to hone their skills as they continue promote the company on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube through the Disney Creators Lab.

The new initiative brings together 20 social influencers who are already sharing content that relates to or is directly about The Walt Disney Company. While Disney doesn’t need the help of hand-selected influencers to get people to share about what’s new with the company, Disney does want to create a more efficient system to officially bring creators into its world through the Disney Creators Lab.

According to Disney, the influencers selected for the first round of the Disney Creators Lab were picked based on creative content and growth potential on various social media platforms. The influencers all come from diverse backgrounds and each has a unique content viewpoint that aligns with the company’s goals of bringing more relevant content to consumers.

The program will take influencers through eight online courses with lessons on how to promote their content on social media more effectively. The course will be weekly with topics like branding, merchandising, creativity and monetization. Disney has said one class will have direct instruction from a popular TikTok star, but didn’t say who that would be.

While Disney is not paying the creators for participating in the program, the influencers can use the skills they learn to reach more people and work with other brands to achieve some financial revenue in the future.

Creator programs like the Disney Creators Lab are fairly new to the influencer game. Instagram hosted its first “creator week” in June to teach up and coming influencers and content creators things like audience growth, media training and merchandising. The social media company is paying creators $1 billion through 2022 to entice creators to continue to post videos.

TikTok has also launched a creator program called the TikTok Creator Fund. The United States fund started out with $200 million in 2020, and was to be distributed to creators through 2021. Over the next three years TikTok announced the Fund will grow to over $1 billion in the United States, and creators will need to meet the threshold of at least 100K authentic video views in 30 days to be eligible to join the Creator Fund.

As companies like Disney, TikTok and Instagram continue to rely on creators and influencers to bring more eyes to content creator funds will likely be the way of the future. The funds allow creators to learn more about certain platforms while being paid monetarily in the moment or in the future with large brand sponsorships due to what they’ve learned in each program.