Disney Advertising today (Oct. 4) announced a slate of sponsors — spanning CPG, food and beverage, automotive, retail verticals and beyond — for Halloween and holiday season programming across its portfolio. The recent and returning brand partners exhibit how marketers are approaching the holiday season, which is increasingly expanding to incorporate Halloween, and the way they’re tackling recent trends.
“Brand marketers are interested by how they need to point out up during the holidays and when that basically starts,” said John Campbell, senior vice chairman of client partnerships at Disney. “From a consumer standpoint, we start talking about Halloween costumes right after Christmas, and we’re talking a couple of Christmas list all-year round. We’re beginning to see that consumer behavior in a marketing behavior.”
For Halloween, Disney has greater than 30 sponsors across its portfolio, which incorporates Hulu, Freeform and FX. Hershey’s signed a two-year deal that features brand spots across Hulu’s Huluween and Freeform’s “31 Nights of Halloween” programming. Huluween, now in its sixth season, is the favorite event of 78% of viewers on the platform, translating to three billion streaming hours, Campbell said.
In addition, Disney has greater than 15 recent and returning sponsors for its holiday season programming. Kohl’s is returning for its ninth yr as sponsor of Freeform’s “25 Days of Christmas” with Ford Truck in its second yr sponsoring Hulu’s holiday campaign. Additional holiday programming sponsors include JCPenney, Sephora, Planet Fitness, and Balsam Hill.
Along with “25 Days of Christmas,” Disney’s holiday programming includes CMA Country Christmas, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest and — in what Campbell describes as the company’s own “gift” — each NBA games and Monday Night Football on Christmas. The demand for Halloween and holiday sponsorships is coming from each endemic and non-endemic brands.
“Either you are just coming to draft off of all the amazing content and be an element of what we’re doing, or we’re really creating something custom — now we have the levers on each of those sides,” the exec said. “But either way, we’re looking to essentially create a campaign [that] infuses creativity and technology.”
As an example of the latter, Campbell pointed to last weekend’s “Toy Story Funday Football,” which animated the Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars game in the variety of the Pixar classic in real time. The company’s in-house creative consultancy, Disney CreativeWorks, works to create custom content, like a “Spooktacular Charcuterie Board” product of KitKat and Reese’s that shall be promoted on Freeform.
While many brands returned as sponsors this yr, some are starting to sign multi-year deals not around sports, as is normally the case, but around tent pole event programming. Campbell says brands try to do a “bit extra” with their efforts this yr, especially on streaming platforms that allow for more innovation.
“Marketers are really trying to align with content that individuals care about … but additionally go further down into that purchase funnel,” he said. “That’s where we have done plenty of work with our ad platforms, teams and a few of our vendors to determine what our commerce suite looks like.”
Building out its ad and commerce offerings is crucial for Disney during a tumultuous period for the entertainment giant. The company in August saw its stock hit its lowest level in nearly nine years as CEO Bob Iger looks to turnaround the company that he returned to in 2022 lower than a yr after retiring.
Key to Iger’s efforts is Disney constructing out its ad-supported tier on Disney+, which Campbell says will begin to feel and look so much more like Hulu. But whilst consumers take care of subscription and ad fatigue, Disney research says holiday-related ads do well on its platforms, with 86% of Disney viewers having a positive opinion of the ads, 55% claiming that the ads help them purchase something for the holiday season and 63% researching a services or products they saw.
“We realize it’s working because consumers are telling us through our research that they appreciate the added experience, versus something that is disrupting their lives,” the executive explained. “It’s helping them of their on a regular basis life. That’s a part of the reason why now we have so many brand partners coming back to us, needless to say.”
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