Up For Best Picture And A Look Back At Steve Jobs' 1997 Goal To Establish Pixar As The Third Brand In Movies

Disney purchased the front cover of the Hollywood trade newspaper Variety to push Pixar's computer animated film Up for Award season (thanks to Awards Daily for the scan). The advertisement FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION section pushes the feature for not only the Best Animated Feature category, but also Best Picture (an no, this isn't a surprise). With ten best picture nominees, Up is sure to at least get a nod, but does the film really have a chance for Best Picture? It's interesting that they are selling the Best Picture campaign purely on the opening of Up, and the montage of Carl and his wife.

Check out the full cover after the jump followed by an interesting excerpt from a 1997 letter from Steve Jobs talking about how he wants to establish Pixar as the third brand in entertainment, alongside Steven Spielberg and Disney,

Another thing I came across recently was Steve Jobs' vision for Pixar, as laid out in his letter to shareholders in mid-1997, as reprinted by

The Pixar Touch:

We believe there are only two significant brands in the film industry–"Disney" and "Steven Spielberg". We would like to establish "Pixar" as the third. Successful brands are a reflection of consumer trust, which is earned over time by consumers' positive experiences with the brand's products. For example, parents trust Disney-branded animated films to provide satisfying and appropriate family entertainment, based on Disney's undisputed track record of making wonderful animated films. This trust benefits both parents and Disney: it makes the selection of family entertainment that much easier for parents, and it allows Disney to more easily and assuredly draw audiences to see their new films. Over time we want Pixar to grow into a brand that embodies the same level of trust as the Disney brand.

Apparently the full letter, which was publicly available on the Pixar web site, was removed after Disney acquired the company in 2006.