Interview with Disney's Larry Shapiro

Larry Shapiro, executive vice president, business development and operations at Walt Disney Internet Group, has been an outspoken critic of the mobile entertainment ecosystem and the need for content delivery standardization, better user interfaces and improved content discovery.

Shapiro recently spoke with FierceMobileContent editor-in-chief Sue Marek about some new trends in Disney’s content development process and gave some insight into where he thinks mobile advertising is headed.

FierceMobileContent: Is High School Musical 2 the big focus for Disney right now?

Shapiro: That’s a big focus for the summer. One thing that we have realized is that there is a competitive strength for us to take advantage of the activities that are going on around the company that we can link into from a content perspective as well as from a marketing angle.

FierceMobileContent: It’s an integrated multiplatform campaign. Is this the first time you have done something like this?

Shapiro: I don’t think it’s the first time we have been multiplatform but it may be the first time that we’ve approached something by thinking about the multiple platforms. We have been meeting cohesively and working with the people that are doing marketing for those other platforms.

FierceMobileContent: Are you getting involved in these campaigns earlier in the process?

Shapiro: Yes, we are getting involved much earlier in the process. We are involved at the script stage rather than further down the process. In the past we have arranged mobile content around significant properties but it hasn’t been integrated at the script stage. We haven’t been thinking about the story lines for the mobile content as it relates to the story lines in the other media. This is step one of several things that we see as enhancing our position in the mobile content space. What is mobile content vs. Internet content vs. connected-console content? You have a consumer and they may have a couple different devices that they use for different things—a PC, a TV, or a cell phone--and you are trying to decide how to deliver to them the right experience. We are trying to design and build the content to take advantage of those platforms in a connected way. How do we play into that in a mobile space and give someone a great experience?

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