Disneyland is the second most popular theme park in the world, after Walt Disney World–but they still had challenges with awareness. The Disneyland team wanted to highlight that it’s not just a single park, but a full resort with two theme parks and three hotels. When Disney invested $1.1 billion to expand California Adventure with a new Cars-themed Land, they partnered with us and Expedia to create a major online campaign around Pixar’s most successful franchise.
Disney had just completed the biggest park expansion in their history-to-date and needless to say, this was important to get right. This was also a huge moment for Disney's much-touted vertical integration strategy. Pixar had been fairly recently acquired at the time, and this represented the largest presence of an acquired property in any of their parks. This opening also represented a shift in strategy to position the resort as a multi-day destination for families, not just a day-trip for local residents. Raising the profile of their second park, California Adventure, was key.
In thinking through what would most excite an Expedia user and catch their attention, we looked first at what they would be there to do; the booking widget front and center on Expedia’s homepage has far and away the most eyeballs on it. (I saw heatmaps and everything!) So of course, that’s the first thing I wanted to mess with. Turns out Expedia doesn’t like messing with their booking widget.
As Art Director for the agency’s West Coast office, I partnered with Expedia’s marketing team to secure homepage and UI access for a site takeover. I also coordinated with Pixar’s creative team to ensure our use of their characters met their strict animation standards.
The campaign delivered strong brand synergy, featuring Lightning McQueen racing across Expedia’s homepage and interacting with the booking widget in a way that pleased both brands and engaged Disney fans. Post-campaign, Disneyland Resort ticket sales rose over 20% and revenue grew 39%. The ad unit was also named a finalist for an Omma Award.
The success of Carsland would eventually lead to far more vertical integration for Disney's other properties, like Star Wars and Marvel's Avengers.
After the campaign, Disneyland Resort ticket sales increased by over 20% and revenue increased 39%. The Expedia ad unit was voted to be a finalist for an Omma Award, and after some early success indicators, the campaign was quickly expanded to Orbitz as well.
