Star Wars is an “evergreen” franchise for Disney, which means its marketing is always on. In the run up to the release of Star Wars, The Force Awakens, Disney applied its theory of storytelling to marketing to make sure it was connecting with fans as well as building a new generation of Star Wars aficionados to build its future audience.
Speaking at ADMA Data Day in Sydney yesterday (28 April) CMO of Disney Australia and ex-media man Gavin Ashcroft, and self-confessed Star Wars obsessive, also said the main consideration for content and partnerships with brands is making every execution part of the “Star Wars universe”.
“We want the universe to feel seamless for our fans and for them to be able to get lost in its content,” he said.
“Every story should be a doorway to a place that feels vast, intricate and real. This same philosophy applies to marketing. Our story must be seamless across marketing channels and feel authentic and connected. Every marketing story we create should move the story forward but be a complete experience in its own right.”
Ashcroft outlined the three audiences it needed to target in the run up to the release of The Force Awakens; teens, millennial women and its existing Gen Y/boomer fan base.
Unsurprisingly brand opinion was twice as high among men than women and likeability was also higher so women were a key focus.
“We had to reawaken our heartland of ardent fans and broaden it beyond the male dominated fanbase,” Ashcroft told the audience. Continuing to serve our fans is critical to the maintenance of a franchise like Star Wars but we could reach out to new audiences with a new content tentpole for the first time in years. We had to stay true to the storytelling that is so fundamental to Star Wars as a franchise and to Disney as a company," he said.
“There’s a very simple straightforward idea that distinguishes Star Wars - it’s one place - a galaxy far, far away. It’s one history, with a single time line. It’s one story that can be separated into thousands of other stories, but they must all connect back to the one continuity. No single story line can break the continuity or contradict the story that we’ve been telling for decades,” he explained.
Star Wars, he said, was “transmedia storytelling” even before the label was invented as it crossed over multiple channels with TV, films, books, comics, interactive games. Now there’s even a theme park on the way.
Check out Disney CMO on the strategic use of partnerships, especially in the context of the scarcity of content.
Earlier this month Disney Australia and New Zealand's MD Catherine Powell announced she was leaving the top job, having scored a promotion to a Euro Disney president position based in Paris.
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