Launching Disney+
Summary
Disney+ is, well... Disney+. The third top streaming service worldwide since its launch in 2019. After working on many Disney & Marvel campaigns prior to this at Once Upon A Time agency, I was given the chance to co-direct and design with my CD the UK and EMEA launch of the Disney+ platform – its entire core concept, which would then be translated across all digital & print marketing in over 100 countries.
Service | Creative Direction, OOH Print & Digital Marketing Design, Experiential Ideation, Pitching, Copy & Storytelling, Video & Animation, OOH Print & Digital Marketing.
We needed to generate mass awareness and excitement for Disney+ across the Out Of Home media plan - print, static and digital OOH across thousands of websites, emailers, and streaming & social platforms. Showcase the breadth of content available across the 5 brand pillars, ensuring that the creative doesn’t position the platform as something that is only relevant for family audiences. But also consider how the approach can be tailored and get experimental with bespoke heavy-traffic sites such as the Piccadilly Lights and Waterloo station in London.
Now remember, this is Disney. There’s a lot of tight deadlines, a lot of intention needed in the creative to fit a mass of demographics, and a LOT of cautiousness in choices that you need to take around launching something this big. As a team, we needed to be smart, think broad but still exciting, and hit them with some concepts that was going to knock their socks off.
The Concept(s)
As mentioned, there were a few, that definitely went through a good amount of revision stages (to say the least). We kicked off with some like ‘Expect More’ , using the ‘+’ as a repetitive device to disrupt the viewers expectation with an unexpected tone of voice. Reflecting the wording in the imagery to drive home the emotional connection and range of content. +Mischief, +Thrills etc… but a touch too much of a ‘risk’ to start the platform.
A suggestion to use one of the biggest pulls to the platform and make them the take over. The Simpsons. The idea was to spoof Disney content using actual footage of the Simpsons replicating each scene. This will be done by carefully selecting matching footage to enable a thorough spoofing! And of course, Bart will be used to deface Disney+ ads creating a disruptive tension across the campaign. They loved it! But again, a lot for the launch and we’d revisit in the future (so not all lost!)
Below | Some concept artwork for the scrapped ideas.
From Drawing Board to Big Screen
But then finally, a mashed together set of concepts of our ‘All Together Better’ and ‘Through The Keyhole’ gave us an unstoppable force of creative flow to take hold off, run with, and eventually get signed off. Using the ‘+’ as a gateway into a world of new content as well as keeping the brand front of mind, and showing off that this is not the Disney you know, it’s so much more.
We created this beautiful balance of brand showcasing for each of the platforms pillars and content, divided by our neon ‘brand threads’ created purposely for the creative, whilst teasing with the keyhole aspect of the plus to excite people’s curiosity and urge them to discover what is waiting on the other side. It created a way to really target the broad demographic they had by showcasing side by side the likes of Jeff Goldblum, Thor & Moana. Finding that sweet spot needed to fit the brief of highlighting the range of content, staying true to the Disney brand but really bringing out the magic the new platform had to offer in a whole new light – for all demographics – with this launch created an insane buzz to the arrival of Disney+, acquiring 4 million paid subscribers through 28 million app downloads.
Taking over your peripheral vision
We Disnified your daily commute,, your Amazon Prime watching, Snapchat news, IMDB scrolling, morning Spotify rituals. You name it. We created artwork to work beautifully across a variety of platforms and ratios, meaning that each hotspot had fine detailing & imagery design and composition planning.
From Marvel & Pixar campaigns, the launch of Star, to working on digital, media/animation and OOH for Mandalorian, Onward and Mulan, and plenty more. Each campaign had to be as stunning and awe-inspiring as the last, and truly capture the essence of what Disney+ had to offer. Their artwork and experience executions had to be no exception.
Above | My concept artwork for the more ‘experiential’ OOH executions.
This one was a dream come true really. Doing something this massive was absolutely mind-blowing to me. The chance to go this big with creative – wow. I had the privilege of really growing not only my design capabilities across the spectrum of concepting, copywriting, storytelling, learning from some incredible leaders in the space, but also took my confidence in presenting and pitching with high-performing clients to a whole new level.