The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2024
Disney's This Is Magic streams one real park day live across 11 franchise accounts
To prove Walt Disney World is 'The Most Magical Place On Earth', the campaign posted real unscripted magic as social stories in real time.
Walt Disney World
What it had to solve
Walt Disney World wanted to prove why it is called 'The Most Magical Place On Earth'. Scripted film would be dismissed as advertising, so the campaign had to show real magic happening and let fans witness it.
How it works
Walt Disney World is called 'The Most Magical Place On Earth', a claim that is easy to make and hard to prove with advertising. Any scripted film could be dismissed as marketing, so the campaign set itself a harder task: show magic that was actually happening.
With Dentsu Creative Chicago, the team turned the camera away from scripted moments and captured real, unscripted magic across the parks, sharing each story at the exact time it happened, as social stories the way real people share moments. Eleven of Disney's biggest franchises, including @starwars, @pixar and @disney, ran a synchronized social takeover over a single day.
More than 107 million Disney fans were invited to follow the magic from the moment the gates opened to the closing fireworks. D&AD keeps the work in its awards archive under Digital Marketing; the page records no engagement figures beyond the invitation count.
Why it lands
- Posting unscripted moments in real time makes the evidence indistinguishable from what guests themselves share, which reads as truth rather than advertising.
- A synchronized takeover across 11 franchise accounts lets each brand's audience discover one day of park magic through the accounts they already follow.
- Bounding the story to a single day, from gate opening to fireworks, gives the campaign a narrative arc and a reason to follow along live.
- Choosing the parks' own real moments means the proof is repeatable every day they are open, not a one-off production.
What it did
More than 107 million Disney fans were invited to follow real magic over the single takeover day, from opening to closing fireworks. The campaign turned the parks' everyday unscripted moments into the evidence for the 'most magical place' claim, and D&AD keeps the work in its awards archive.
What you can take
To prove a superlative, show the thing itself happening: real unscripted moments shared live let the place make an argument scripted advertising cannot.
Since then
The campaign is preserved in the D&AD awards archive, which credits Dentsu Creative Chicago as entrant and advertising agency and names Disney as brand. The archive page records no engagement or attendance figures beyond the 107 million fans invited to the one-day takeover.
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