Disney Pictures Extends Twitter Partnership to EarlyBird

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Disney Pictures, a recent partner of Twitter, is the first to launch an @earlybird offer with the company. Following a promotion for Walt Disney Pictures/ Pixar Animation's "Toy Story 3" on Twitter, Disney's movie arm is using the latest paid Twitter service to push a ticket discount for "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".

"We've got an amazing lineup of deals to share in the coming days and weeks with people following @earlybird," wrote a Twitter communications staffer on the company's blog today. The company said it will promote earlybird deals on behalf of its advertisers, as well as deriving them from companies operating in the exploding online deals and group discount sector, such as Groupon and luxury goods discounter Gilt Groupe.

The Disney promotion mimics one it did for Toy Story 3, and solidifies the entertainment firm's interest in social media marketing. Throughout the day today Twitter's @earlybird account has retweeted DisneyPictures posts about the buy-one get-one Sorcerer's Apprentice ticket deal. "Enter your zip code, show time, 2 tickets, the APPRENTICE code, and get your 2 for 1 ticket to #SorcerersApprentice!" stated one post. The link in the post leads to a page on Fandango.

Disney was the first advertiser to try another recent paid Twitter service, Promoted Tweets. In June, Disney used Promoted Tweets - a paid listing that appears below Twitter's list of trending topics - to push the Toy Story 3 flick. Today, Twitter is using a promoted tweet to drive traffic to the @earlybird account.

If its recent Twitter and Facebook experimentation is any indication, the decades-old firm has clearly embraced social media marketing. The firm has promoted its Disney Tickets Together application for Facebook on the social network and Twitter. The app allows people to coordinate a "movie party" by organizing a group of friends to buy tickets to Disney films.

The Toy Story campaign also featured an intricate series of viral efforts, including Web videos mimicking '80s toy ads and flyers placed around college campuses promoting a Facebook page advertising delivery jobs at "Pizza Planet," a restaurant featured in the Toy Story movies.