As a highly anticipated “legacy-quel,” Disney’s Freakier Friday set a high bar for our teams to eventize the film as the must-go theatrical event of the summer.
Given that the film (and its prequel) takes place in LA, our primary objective was to create a creator-led one-of-a-kind experience in the form of a branded creator trip where attendees would ride a Y2K themed double-decker tour bus and capture their experience visiting all of the iconic LA landmarks from the film with surprise talent drop-ins and get a taste of the Los Angeles lifestyle — Freakier Friday style.
We wanted to pursue a non-traditional media route in order to reach our audience and decided early on that creators would be the heart of our digital campaign, specifically those in the lifestyle, fashion, pop culture, Y2K, and comedy spaces. Our goal was to create a unique experience, giving the influencers opportunities to create bespoke content around Freakier Friday.
Our vision was a tour bus themed inside and out to Freakier Friday that would make several stops throughout LA over the course of two days. To make this a once-in-a-lifetime experience, not only did we curate the bus tour stops based on the real locations in the film, we also surprised the creators with talent appearances at the locations that related to their characters: The Record Parlour with Chad Michael Murray, Openaire with Manny Jacinto, Echo Park Swan Boats with Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons, Palisades Beach with Jamie Lee Curtis, and lastly, the world premiere in Hollywood with Lindsay Lohan and the rest of the cast.
We enlisted Experiential Supply Co. to spearhead the project and bring our vision to life, from theming the bus from the ground up to ensuring we had permits, permissions, and logistics sorted out for each stop of the tour.
In terms of sourcing creators, our internal influencer marketing strategy team and our international markets helped curate the best creators suited for this trip, across music, fashion, pop culture, and comedy.
In addition to theming up each creator’s hotel room to Freakier Friday, we also worked with our promotional partners to curate gift bags for our creators upon their arrival at the Roosevelt Hotel, which included Old Navy (athletic set, for mat pilates on the beach), Walgreens (snacks, make-up, skincare, self-care items), Angara (jewelry for the premiere), in addition to Freakier Friday-themed items designed and sourced by Experiential Supply.
Our LA Creator Trip successfully executed our team’s goals. Across the 30 creators we invited, earned media impressions exceeded 90 million and engagements surpassed 4.7 million across 700 posts. The success of this activation set a new precedent for creator-first non-traditional events within our team and went on to support Freakier Friday’s box office success, with a $45M global box office total for opening weekend.
