On July 26th, millions of American tween girls (and yes, a few boys), will be glued to Disney Channel for the closest thing to a Hannah Montana concert — in their own living room! — as they’ll ever get. The broadcast, you see, will be in 3-D.
And the millions of 3-D glasses that will be worn that night were manufactured here in Memphis by American Paper Optics. (APO’s president, John Jerit, was featured on the November 2005 cover of Memphis magazine). The glasses will be distributed free (a word rarely associated with the Hannah Montana Phenomenon) at Wal-Mart locations coast to coast (and in Canada).
They’ll also be inserted in the July 21st issue of TV Guide.
“We started to work with Disney Marketing about three months before the 3-D movie was released in February,” says Jerit. “As the success of the movie swelled, my quotations to Disney grew from 300,000 four-packs for a DVD to over 3,500,000. Of course, the delivery schedule stayed the same, even though the order grew tenfold. The success of the movie in theaters spawned the upcoming TV broadcast. Once Disney found a major sponsor and distributor (Wal-Mart), the order took on a life of its own. It was what I referred to as not ‘3-D’ but ‘4-M’ — Miley, Montana, Marketing, Monster.”
APO won’t be slowing down after the Hannah Montana show. Says Jerit, “We are now in production for nearly nine million glasses for the Journey to the Center of the Earth DVD that will have four-packs included in the DVD case.”
— Frank Murtaugh
