There was a time when the monster under the bed was, reliably, a monster — blue and fuzzy, perhaps, with a single eyeball and a job at a scream factory. That time, it turns out, was childhood.
A new campaign for the Disney+ streaming service, created by VCCP, traces a single viewer from boyhood to fatherhood through the creatures that have kept him company along the way. The spot, called "Under the Bed," opens with a child watching "Monsters, Inc.," the 2001 Pixar film that made workplace comedies of the closet-dwelling set. From there, the years unspool: "The Sixth Sense" arrives in adolescence, "The Walking Dead" in early adulthood, and "Alien: Earth," the FX series, by the time the viewer has children of his own.
The campaign extends what Disney+ has called its "A Lifetime of Great Stories" platform, which is to say, a positioning strategy meant to remind subscribers that the service contains more than animated musicals about princesses with improbable hair (though it contains those, too).
The spot was directed by Stefanie Soho through Smuggler, the production company, and was shot on 35mm film — a choice that lends the proceedings a texture more commonly associated with prestige cinema than with advertisements for subscription video services. Whether viewers will notice the grain is, of course, another matter.
The underlying argument is a familiar one for streamers with libraries as sprawling as Disney's: we have something for every stage of your life, and also every mood, and also that thing you forgot you wanted to watch. It is the entertainment equivalent of a department store, except the escalator never stops and there is always another floor.
The monster under the bed, it seems, has a subscription too.
Original story published in The Drum: "Ad of the Day: Disney+ makes a monster story feel beautifully human | The Drum"