Disney Storytelling at the Experiential Marketing Summit in Sydney

blog - disney story tellingI’ve just returned from two great days at the Experiential Marketing Summit in Sydney, Australia.  I was honored to be asked to kick off the conference as the keynote speaker.  My topic was Disney’s 2010 Give a Day, Get a Disney Day promotion which won the Best Promotion of the Year PRO Award from PROMO Magazine.  The audience, full of brand and agency side marketers, was very attentive and absorbed how Disney designed the program, integrated it throughout its organization and how it exceeded even Disney’s high standards.

Disney built the give-back program due to the plea from President Obama for all in the government, corporate and private sector to get involved with their local community and give back to make it a better place to live.  After much internal discussion to make sure the program didn’t come across too promotional or gimmicky, Disney put all of their marketing efforts into building a program that could truly make a difference in communities across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

This program was integrated within more than 11 internal departments including promotions, special events, public relations, advertising, community relations, park operations and more.  The results were amazing!  In just 67 days, Disney met its aggressive goal of getting one million volunteers to commit to giving back in their community (over 8 million hours of community service).  In addition to being awarded the Best Promotion of the Year, it also won the Best Integrated Program category and was awarded second place for the Best Cause Related promotion.

My company has been fortunate to work with Disney in field marketing since 2008.  We have provided over 1,000 trained Brand Ambassadors throughout most of the United States.  They reach out to us to provide logistics, operations and site development including site negotiations.  We know what an honor it is to be affiliated with Disney and we fully appreciate every chance we get to help them to meet/exceed their promotional efforts.  As you can imagine, Disney people are special marketers; with a full understanding of how to tell a story and how to build an experience – two key elements for every experiential marketing program.

A special thank you to the Walt Disney World Promotions Department for allowing me to share this award winning program and for providing me some great visuals and content to share with the audience!