The almost 13,000-strong crowd, filing through the security checkpoints at the Honda Centre in Anaheim, California, could be walking into a rock concert. But these pop culture superfans are not here for Bruce Springsteen or Taylor Swift. They are here to pay homage to brand Disney.
The showcase they have come to see includes trailers, never-before-seen footage from films and TV shows that are still in production, and announcements of planned expansions to Disney’s theme parks, and iconic rides, around the world.
The D23 opening night entertainment showcase at the Honda Centre in Anaheim.
Any way you look at it, it’s marketing, pure and simple. But there are moments – many of them – when the D23 convention more resembles an evangelical super-church. At this year’s dialled-up opening night showcase, there are spotlights strafing the 13,000-strong crowd. The applause and cheering shakes the stadium to its foundations. The company’s CEO is greeted by the crowd like the Pope.
And down the road, at the Anaheim Convention Centre, almost 90,000 people will push through the turnstiles over three days, to watch panels and see previews and to participate in marketing “activations” – essentially, photo and video setups, or interactive environments, based on Disney’s films and TV shows.
They are also there to spend, at the many retail spaces inside the convention centre, selling toys and other products based on existing Disney titles, or convention “exclusives”, limited edition items that can only be found at D23.
Here, Only Murders in the Building and Australia’s Bluey jockey with Star Wars and Marvel for love. To earn your stripes as a superfan, this is the proving ground.
“We look at D23 as a marketing event, but it’s also a celebration of our fans,” Disney’s chief brand officer and president of marketing, Asad Ayaz, said. “[In the stadium], you see the energy in that room, you see the love the fans have for these characters, these stories, these brands, and we take that very seriously.”
The stories Ayaz is referring to range from the movie industry’s blue-chip performers, including Marvel and Lucasfilm, to a slate of live-action films, such as Avatar, the Pixar films, including Toy Story, and Disney’s own new and historic IP, from Snow White to Mufasa: The Lion King.
Among this year’s revelations were new trailers for Snow White, Mufasa: The Lion King and the new streaming Marvel series Agatha All Along. But there were also sneak-peeks at projects still in production, including the Star Wars film The Mandalorian & Grogu, the next Avatar film, the second season of the Star Wars series Andor, the film Tron: Ares, and confirmations for Toy Story 5, Frozen 3 and Frozen 4.
This year’s D23 is acutely significant, coming off the back of a rough couple of years for the studio. Several Disney animated films Strange World, Encanto and Lightyear bombed – a deep cut for a studio built on animation – while The Marvels was a rare dud on the studio’s hit Marvel slate and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was, well, not Indiana Jones’s finest hour.
The hottest ticket in the House of Mouse? Australia’s Bluey, by reservation only.
Since the return of the studio’s charismatic, almost totemic CEO Bob Iger, its fortunes have turned around. Inside Out 2 has become the highest-grossing animated movie of all time with $US1.5 billion in box office takings, Deadpool & Wolverine is hurtling towards $US1 billion of its own, and there is enormous buzz around Moana 2, the sequel to a film which, in 2023, set streaming records.
Disney has “returned to glory with a vengeance”, Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian told CNBC last week. “They are in the midst of phenomenal comeback year for the studio.”
D23 also hosts three stadium “showcases” during the convention with crowds of about 12,000 sponsored by Visa, tickets for which are not included in the convention pass. The net effect: Disney shifts a substantial amount of their costs for D23 off their books.
Bring your daughter to work day … fans in “cosplay” as Princess Leia and Queen Padmé Amidala.
Ayaz highlights the importance of using a tool like D23 in a rapidly changing media landscape, in particular, to connect with segments of the audience who have disconnected from traditional marketing methodologies, such as Gen Z.
“They spend a lot of time on their phones, they do not watch television the way that [earlier] generations have and do, and one of the greatest challenges is that they don’t necessarily engage with traditional marketing and advertising,” Ayaz said.
“They actually avoid advertising on social and mobile, so when we are marketing and when we are promoting, we have to make it feel organic and authentic to them,” he said. “It is a very different generation, but I think it’s a huge opportunity for us to engage with them in an authentic way.”
Perhaps the most misunderstood element of the Disney puzzle in mainstream consumer media is the balance between the various elements of the company’s core businesses.
The perception of Disney as a Hollywood film studio under-measures the importance and emphasis the company places on its theme park, cruise line and other businesses.
At D23, the announcement of a new theme park “land”, or a new Disney-branded cruise product, or this year’s announcement that the company’s iconic Disneyland in California will expand in size by almost 50 per cent in the coming years, is met with the same kind of cult-like excitement from fans as news of a new Star Wars, Marvel or Frozen movie.
Preaching to the converted … Disney’s fans packed in the Honda Centre.Credit: Getty Images for Disney
On that point, the expansion will not increase Disneyland’s 488-hectare site, but by converting parking lots into multi-storey structures – thanks to a generous rezoning from the city of Anaheim – the park can expand to house new “lands”, including the wintry Arendelle from Frozen and the metropolis of Zootopia. The expansion will take a decade and cost $US1.9 billion.
Tying all of those strands together – Star Wars movies, Snow White reboots, Frozen toys and expansions to Disneyland – is the job of D23, where the studio goes in for the hard sell, and the diehard fans don’t seem to mind. Nobody here is clicking the “opt-out” link.
Fans get the inside track on new Disney activity at the D23 convention.Credit: Getty Images for Disney
“Having our social media terms and influencers in that room, there are clips and moments and highlights going out and being served to the fans all over the world,” Ayaz says.
“Whether [they are] a fan of a comic book, our content on YouTube, or engaging with us on gaming, our publishing or our consumer products.”
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