Nearly every child born in America in the second half of the 20th century (and beyond) was reared on Disney. The Wonderful World of Disney occupied a prime slot on the weekly television schedule; Disneyland and Disney World were aspirational vacation destinations, and Disney movies were worth the cost of admission for the entire family because of a corporate ethos established by Walt Disney himself: “The important thing is the family. If you can keep the family together—and that’s the backbone of our whole business, catering to families—that’s what we hope to do.”
For generations of families, the Walt Disney signature logo was as good as the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It was an unspoken promise of wholesome, winsome, quality entertainment that could be safely enjoyed by the entire family.
The strong tailwinds of that reputation have carried the Disney brand through a turbulent last decade, as the company has seen a virtual carousel of CEOs pass in and out of the executive suite, and a number of highly visible public relations missteps have dampened the public’s trust in and enthusiasm for the brand.
There was a time when Disney was one of the most trusted brands in America, according to an annual Axios Harris Poll designed to gauge the reputation of the most visible brands in America. As recently as 2021, the company ranked 37th out of 100 companies on the list. But Disney’s reputation has taken a hit in recent years, dropping to #65 in 2022, and #77 in 2023.
Still, enough parents and grandparents have enough residual trust in the brand that many will unthinkingly leave their little ones to explore Disney+ unsupervised; or buy an app or videogame for their child just because it carries Disney branding; or blindly trust any Disney aligned businesses or brand partners. And that could be a grave mistake. According to a press release on TikTok’s website, the social media giant has entered into a new affiliate program with Disney. Their release enthuses:
“The Walt Disney Company and TikTok today announced a first-of-its-kind global deal that will bring fans and creators alike a unique way to discover and create content utilizing memorable scenes and moments from Disney movies and shows.
“The agreement, which will pilot in the US in the coming months with the intention of other markets to follow, will bring an expansive collection of thoughtfully curated Disney-centric fan-created content from TikTok to the Disney+ app. At launch, short-form videos from participating creators who opt-in to the program will live on both TikTok and in Verts on Disney+ and feature characters and stories from across Disney’s brands including Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, FX and more.
“TikTok will offer their creators access to assets related to hundreds of films and series from Disney’s vast library of enduring franchises and beloved IP. Fans will enjoy a shared Disney experience with TikTok videos that will be refreshed regularly to engage subscribers more deeply in timely fan conversations, building stronger communities, and ultimately, helping them engage with more story formats across Disney+.”
This development is especially notable because Disney is notorious for jealously guarding its trademarked properties against any and all possible copyright infringements – even threatening to sue three Florida daycare centers for using Disney characters in painted wall murals. But now, TikTok creators are getting a green-light from Disney to use their trademarked characters in the production of short-form video content.
Maybe Disney is counting on consumers’ short memories. It was not long ago, after all, that TikTok was facing a potential ban in the U.S. because of the possibility that it was a threat to national security and the subject of a lawsuit from fourteen state Attorneys General over harm to minors.
TikTok was also the subject of a Wall Street Journal investigation that revealed that TikTok’s algorithms fed content featuring drugs, pornography, and other adult content to accounts owned by 13-year-olds. These algorithms make social media addictive – and dangerous – especially for young people.
Yet this is the platform Disney has chosen to help carry its brand.
Disney isn’t simply licensing a few characters to TikTok. It is giving TikTok creators access to hundreds of films and television shows and inviting them to turn Disney’s intellectual property into an endless stream of short-form content. Some of that content will then be brought back into Disney+ itself, where parents may reasonably assume that Disney has exercised some degree of control over what their children can see, but that assumption may no longer be warranted.
TikTok is not simply another place where children happen to encounter Disney characters. It is a platform whose business model depends upon capturing and holding users’ attention. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 67 percent of teenagers reported using TikTok, and 16 percent said they used it almost constantly. TikTok’s recommendation system learns what keeps an individual user engaged and then serves up more of it.
That is precisely what makes social media such a powerful marketing tool. Entertainment companies no longer have to rely solely on conventional advertising to create demand for a movie, television show, or character. They can enlist users themselves as marketers—through memes, viral videos, hashtags, word-of-mouth and the influence of the “super peers” whose opinions and behavior carry particular weight within their social networks.
The Disney-TikTok arrangement takes that phenomenon a step further. Disney is effectively handing an enormous library of beloved characters and stories to a platform engineered to turn attention into more attention, and children are particularly valuable targets for that kind of engagement. Young people are highly sensitive to social cues, peer approval, and the fear of missing out.
Disney’s enormous reservoir of parental trust was built on the idea that the company understood something important about children: that entertainment isn’t merely entertainment when you are dealing with developing minds. Walt Disney himself famously said, “Our greatest national resource is the minds of our children.”
Parents could trust Disney to exercise judgment on their behalf, to tell stories the whole family could enjoy together without having to wonder what might be waiting around the corner. TikTok operates on a very different set of incentives.
The issue is not whether every TikTok video is dangerous, or whether every Disney fan video will be inappropriate. Undoubtedly, much of the content produced through this partnership will be harmless fun. Nor is the problem that Disney is experimenting with a new form of marketing. Companies have always looked for new ways to get people talking about their products.
The problem is that Disney appears to be treating TikTok as merely another distribution and marketing channel when it is something fundamentally different: a highly engaging, algorithmically driven platform that has already attracted substantial scrutiny over the way it affects young users and the content they encounter, and Disney knows that from the onset.
The Disney name still carries enormous weight with parents and grandparents. A company that spent generations establishing itself as a safe harbor for family entertainment should understand that its endorsement can confer legitimacy on the companies with which it does business.
Parents who would think twice before handing a child unrestricted access to TikTok may not think twice about Disney. They may see Disney characters, Disney stories, and the familiar Disney name and assume that the same standards they have come to expect from Disney apply here, too.
Disney’s reputation was not built by its logo alone. It was built over generations by earning the trust of families. That trust can survive a bad movie, a disappointing television series, or even a string of corporate missteps, but trust is not inexhaustible.
If Disney wants parents to continue treating that familiar signature as a seal of approval, it needs to remember what that approval was supposed to mean in the first place.
