BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
The Kona Stinky Dee-Lux is the star of Disney’s latest children’s film, Max Keeble’s Big Move.
Max Keeble is a paper boy and school kid who is bullied by all and sundry. When he finds out he’s moving to a new city, he turns the table on all the people who have ever picked on him, including his headmaster, only to find out he’s not moving after all.
The Stinky Dee-Lux is featured in several action sequences, chase scenes and background sets. Logos can be clearly seen. There’s a RealPlayer/Quicktime/Media Player trailer at http://disney.go.com/…/index2.html
The film opens in October in the US, and in March 2002 in the UK.
In the US, Kona will soon start to benefit from the pre-release promotion of the film, piggy-backing on Disney’s marketing bandwaggon. Promotions include radio ads and internet sweepstakes that will be promoted through Disney.com, Yahoo.com and Nichelodean.com. It’s not there yet, but the Max Keeble homepage on the Disney site (full of videos of the child who plays the eponymous star of the movie asking viewers to send in ‘Keebleisms’ of their own) will feature a hyperlink to Kona’s web site.
The link up with Disney was made possible by Mike Geraci of Base Camp Communications, Kona’s out-of-house PR agency.
Geraci told bikebiz.co.uk: “I have a really good relationship with the production
resources guy at Disney. He likes Kona and thought it would be a good fit for the film.”
In a press release, Geraci said: “Disney was looking for a bike that 10-15-year-old boys would think is cool. The looks and style of the bike, plus Kona’s brand name recognition to the playstation generation sealed the deal.”
No pre-release promotions have yet been decided upon for the UK.
Geraci told bikebiz.co.uk: “I have had preliminary discussions regarding UK/Europe promotions around the film, but because they like to wait until the last minute nothing has been finalised.”
Geraci is, however, willing to hear ideas he can pass on to Disney in the UK, so Kona stockists with promotional brainwaves should contact geraci@wyom.net.
______________________________________________________________________________________
News of the Kona coup first appeared yesterday on http://www.bicycleretailer.com and was based on a press release sent from Mike Geraci. Bikebiz.co.uk then contacted UK importer Paligap for further details. Paligap put us on to Geraci who patched through his press release which was subbed down and made UK-specific. A big pic of the Stinky Dee Lux was going to be placed here after being lifted from http://www.konaworld.com but Paul Rundle, the bikebiz.co.uk webmaster, is in the process of changing servers for bikebiz.co.uk so some features have been disabled temporarily (including previous polls and a few other features). The disruption is being kept to a minimum and the transfer should be completed by the weekend.
