Hairesy! Disney Goes Viral to Plug Tangled

Disney may be closing the book on animated fairy tales, but with Tangled it's certainly leaving a proud hair-itage behind. The animation studio has announced that it's getting out of the fairy tales business because they don't appeal to boys, but its 50th animated motion picture would have made Walt proud (besides being in CGI, that is).

Although it failed to trump the penultimate Harry Potter film, Tangled (which was renamed from the too-girly Rapunzel before it opened) set a US box office record this past weekend by posting the second-biggest Thanksgiving opening ever at $69 million. 

That success may have been due, in part, to parodies produced by Disney's marketers to make their final princess project more hip (and Shrek-like).

As Mashable notes, social media has had a profound impact on how studios promote movies these days. That's why, in a bid to create buzz for Tangled, Disney has promoted online videos for faux brands such as Tangledwear, above, and Rapunzhair — which you can check out (along with other Tangled viral marketing) below.

Here's the mock pharma-style ad for Rapunzhair, a healing hair product:

A fake real estate ad:

Here's Smolder, a Calvin Klein-esque fragrance ad:

And, naturally, a "Show Us Your Smolder" promo driving kids to its Facebook page: 

A mock news report that echoes the OJ Simpson white Bronco chase:

No irony here — just a lyrical ode to Tangled being its 50th animated motion picture:

Disney's marketers got Tangled's viral video spoofs going early; taking a page from Microsoft, they tapped into this summer's Double Rainbow online meme with this sneak peek in September: