My Role to D23 Events: A core aspect of my role centers around the many special events generated by D23: The Official Disney Fan Club. D23 creates these events as a means for the biggest fans to celebrate their favorite aspects of Disney, both from the perspective of legacy content to new releases. This spans across the entertainment side with theatrical and Disney+ Content all the way to the revolutionary and beloved experiences of Disney Parks. I work closely with members of the D23 team to ensure that our events create an engaging atmosphere, creating dream fulfillment around every corner.
Concept & Ideation: I begin by pitching many of the special events we put together for D23, this usually starts with a pitch deck I make to share internally with our D23 team to explain an idea and assess feasibility. Our event producers begin to build a budget estimate which helps us explain costs and fine-tune the pitch. These pitch decks go on to become one-sheets to share with internal business unit partners and potential sponsors. This is a great opportunity to work with so many different people from across The Walt Disney Company and beyond. From various roles to guidelines regarding IP usage, its a lot of plates to juggle in order to even get the green light of moving forward. After approvals and agreements, we move onto the planning stage.
Planning & Causation: Working with incredible event producers, we then take the one-sheet into a phase of planning for the actual event. We begin evaluating venues, contacting vendors and performing site visits to ensure that the event will be well-equipped. We also begin the process of generating event materials and assets on both the pre-arrival side and onsite materials like souvenirs and signage. I provide direction and gather approvals for assets made, making sure they stay in line with approved guidelines and branding. Additionally, I work to generate the actual content and programming that guests will experience on site. This includes things like writing pre-show presentations, scripts for performers and confirming talent appearances if applicable.
Rollout & Communication: In the midst of confirming details for the event, I partake in the copyrighting for the event, listing specific details and offerings which appear to guests on the event page at D23.com. I then work with our marketing team and content manager to make sure the event is shared to our various social channels using the assets I worked to develop which will serve as advertising and the baseline of content integration for the special event. The event is posted and guests may now reserve tickets. I also work with our content manager to select the influencers and content-creators which we will invite to the experience, as they share highlights from the event and the benefit of D23 Membership. I also work with our content capture team to discuss strategy behind photography and video we want to highlight, especially the main components of any given event. Our content manager makes a social plan as we approached the date of the event. We continue planning and confirming many additional details over the course of a few months and then the event arrives!
Onsite & Guest Relations: One of the best parts of working in events is seeing a thing that only used to exist on your computer or in your head in a real-life setting. It’s incredibly rewarding and an immeasurable source of satisfaction. But before we open the doors to our special event, there’s a few pieces to put in place to make the most enjoyable and memorable experience for our guests. I arrive with my team to our venue early for load-in and set up, and one of my responsibilities is to make sure the assets we have generated are placed correctly and appropriately. Whether it’s digital content or physical decorations, I work with art directors and tech directors to make sure everything is in working order before the event begins. I work with my team on making sure talent arrivals are all confirmed for the day and then serve as a host to the talent before the event, making sure they and their team are set for an enjoyable experience. From there, we lay out all event materials, organizing credentials and guest lists. And then we open the doors to welcome guests. As the event goes on, I work across every aspect, this includes checking in guests, handling feedback and recovery and even serve as a D23 personality at some events, hosting and engaging with talent and presenting specialty content in front of the audience. Throughout the event, I’ve been able to assist with our content capture team in getting pictures and video of guests and Talent enjoying the event. Towards the end of the event, we make sure to distribute the commemorative event gifts we developed and shut down the event at close. After close, I work to make sure all of our materials are collected and that we send off talent with a smile and a great time.
Post-Event & Evaluations: There’s a few last steps to take to ensure we not only provided a great experience but learned from what we did well and the opportunities for growth in the future. This begins by first launching a publicly facing Event Recap, this is usually written by myself and features photos and videos of the event, spotlighting guests enjoying themselves at the D23-produced experience. After that, we deploy feedback surveys to all guests who attended and review the information together. It’s a valuable tool as we approach more events in the future.
My Role to D23 Merchandise: As part of a D23 Gold Membership, Members get access to exclusive, limited edition merchandise celebrating holidays, heritage months, anniversaries and even upcoming releases! In my role, I get to pitch and conceptualize the products and work on them all the way through to marketing them on sale. It’s an incredible experience to be a part of making something so tangible and collectible, it’s also a great way for fans to wear their love of a certain character or story on their sleeve. Literally!
Concept & Ideation: I begin by pitching concepts for merchandise around holidays, heritage months, anniversaries and upcoming releases. This consists of me evaluating an IP and focusing on a few ideas for what the product could look like, all the way down to creating a rough layout and mock up. I work with the D23 Team to identify priority titles and anniversaries for this year, and brainstorm on which of these titles are fan-favorites and would create a sought-after item.
Art & Creation: In the next step, I work with the talented artists and graphic designers of Disney Corporate Creative Resources to bring the idea to life. These artists leverage style guides to breathe life into these concepts, creating very well developed products that are the envy of any fan! Following internal approvals, DCCR routes these to brand management and key stakeholders of the IP that the product is based on. I provide context for DCCR to share as to what this pin is used for and the concept we are trying to convey through the artwork. Pending their approvals, we move into budgeting and production of the product with our Disney approved vendors.
Production & Characterization: While the product is in development, we work with our partners at shopDisney to create a product page which will be the point of sale for the product. I work to organize multiple assets for shopDisney including product images and marketing images to use on D23.com and D23 Social Handles. I also write the copy for the given product, to be featured on the shopDisney page. This includes specific details about the product, themed language, and notes on materials and dimensions of the product. From there, I use our Suggest Retail Pricing calculations to take the production cost of the product and generate an SRP price for it. This is routed for approvals for the D23 team and then added to the product information on shopDisney. shopDisney organizes the information and provides us with a page preview to review before posting.
Rollout & Communication: We line up product launch around the given holiday, heritage month, anniversary or upcoming release dates. This allows us to be part of a few key synergy beats, especially if it’s an upcoming release. I sometimes will write an article for D23.com featuring the product and work with our content manager to launch the product via D23 social handles. We try to announce the product before it’s release to prepare the most avid of collectors for the on sale date and times. The product launches on shopDisney for D23 Gold Members to purchase.
Post-Product Sale & Evaluations: Once the product goes on sale, we receive weekly sales reports from shopDisney. Based on the sales, if a product has not yet sold out, we provide more direct messaging to promote its sale. Based on the speed of sell out, the price of product, and the edition size we evaluate if this an IP we should highlight in the future. For the most popular products, they have informed what characters and stories we use as we develop holiday and heritage month items.