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In last year’s upfront event, Disney delivered on its promise of featuring more talent onstage than ever, with the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson, Selena Gomez and more, making marketers marvel. And despite a writers strike keeping many celebs far from upfront stages this year, the company still managed to showcase several big names, including Serena Williams, Kim Kardashian and Marvel head Kevin Feige.
Thus far, the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike has made its presence known in nearly every upfront week presentation, with Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix confirming that they’re going sans talent for their events, as celebrities are wary of crossing picket lines. And with WGA protesters marching outside Disney’s presentation at the North Javits Center in New York—a more expansive venue than last year’s Basketball City—Disney’s ad sales chief Rita Ferro acknowledged the obstacles the event faced in her opening remarks.
“Preparing for this presentation, as you all know, is one of my favorite times of the year, even in years like this, full of difficult challenges,” Ferro said, seemingly acknowledging the strike. But the ad sales president added that “Disney is prepared to meet every challenge.”
For the company, one of the most notable challenges was the strike-related absence of Jimmy Kimmel, its perennial upfront roast master, who’s been so dedicated to the event in the past that he even performed via Zoom after testing positive for Covid-19 the day of Disney’s 2022 presentation.
Making big names a ‘reality’
Without much of its entertainment talent to focus on, sports took up a large portion of the presentation before the company transitioned into news and reality.
Recent Adweek cover subject Serena Williams appeared to announce ESPN’s In the Arena: Serena Williams, a docuseries featuring exclusive looks at the athlete’s career, and Pat McAfee revealed he’s joining ESPN. The company showcased the NBA on ESPN by bringing out Donovan Mitchell from the Cavs to recall his 71 point performance from the season, and Breanna Stewart and Angel Reese appeared onstage, promoting women’s basketball and urging marketers to increase the current stats of only around 5% of sports media marketing going into women’s sports.
Troy Aikman and Joe Buck also pontificated about ABC, ESPN and ESPN+ having 35% more NFL games and the Super Bowl coming to the company in 2027 and 2031.
Peyton Manning previewed the company’s live events, including Dancing With the Stars, which is returning to ABC this fall after airing exclusively on Disney+ last season, and the CMAs, which Manning is returning to host in 2023. David Muir shared stories from World News Tonight, and Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan and George Stephanopoulos talked about some of their biggest interviews.
Hours before the upfront, ABC announced its fall lineup, which includes a golden years version of The Bachelor franchise called The Golden Bachelor, and host Jesse Palmer came onstage to talk about being a part of the season, even giving out roses to Kim and Khloe Kardashian, who shared that The Kardashians was renewed for 20 more episodes on Hulu, ahead of Season 3’s May 25 debut. Ryan Seacrest introduced several of Disney’s other biggest upcoming series, like the return of FX’s The Bear and Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building.
Marveling at footage
Marvel Studios president Feige once again presented at the event, evangelizing Marvel’s success on Disney+.
“I’m pleased to share that when you compare our Marvel series to some of the buzziest shows on competitive services, even our smallest series reached a much larger and more international audience, often two to three times the number of views,” Feige said before introducing new footage for Secret Invasion (which premieres June 21), Echo (releasing all episodes on Nov. 29) and Loki Season 2 (due out Oct. 6).
The footage had several major story reveals, including Kingpin returning in Echo, clearly surviving his supposed death in Hawkeye, and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Owen Wilson’s Mobius interacting with Ke Huy Quan’s new character.
Not to be outdone in Lucasfilm’s first ever upfront appearance, company president Kathleen Kennedy then introduced footage for a trio of upcoming Star Wars series coming to Disney+: The Acolyte, Skeleton Crew and Ahsoka.
Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter also appeared via video message, teasing the company’s first Disney+ show, Win or Lose, which comes to Disney+ with eight episodes in December.
Yet, the presentation’s biggest moment didn’t even come from any of the boldfaces names. Toward the end of the nearly two-hour event, Disney brought out 100 actors dressed as Samurai warriors in honor of FX’s upcoming title Shōgun, the most expensive series in the company’s history. The Samurai went through the crowd, sword fighting before Disney shared an early look at footage from the series.
Keeping DEI in the conversation
Though the presentation mostly focused on Disney’s upcoming content, the company also gave a quick update on Disney+’s new ad tier, which Ferro said had “healthy growth in terms of subscribers and advertisers,” with new capabilities rolling out the previous week.
Additionally, DEI was a main topic of conversation throughout Disney’s presentation.
Disney has required multicultural ad buys as part of its upfront negotiations since 2021, and, ahead of the upfront, Ferro told Adweek that after clients tripled Disney’s overall upfront DEI ask in 2022, the company is challenging them to triple its original ask again this year.
Ferro also challenged marketers from the upfront stage to be intentional with their buys.
“Be deliberate about your investments. Lean into all dimensions of diversity. We have the best storytellers who understand culture, and how to talk to the communities in relevant ways,” Ferro said. “We’ve never been more focused as a company to ensure we deliver against all audiences with the quality stories they expect from Disney and our brand partners.”
The lack of major celebrities from the world of entertainment wasn’t lost on the crowd. After all, in place of Kimmel’s usual comedy routine from the end of the event, Ferro took the stage to talk about the company’s tech stack.
Disney previously explained the details of its tech stack to Adweek, revealing that it’s bringing the power of its films and shows to its advertising. But the topic doesn’t lend itself to many laughs.
Then again, with writers and studios still at an impasse as of the presentation, perhaps it isn’t the right time to laugh anyway.
