LOS ANGELES—The Walt Disney Co. on Friday launched a global marketing blitz — teaming for the first time with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz — to support a promotion at its 11 theme parks worldwide that it hopes will shore up attendance gains made over the past year.
Disney is buying more advertising space in more Conde Nast publications, capitalizing on a trend where several generations of families travel together, said Michael Mendenhall, executive vice president of global marketing for Disney parks.
Its magazines reach a largely affluent, educated and mature audience, reflecting company efforts in recent years to get older people such as grandparents and empty nesters to join their families for parks vacations.
In addition to the Conde Nast magazines, Disney planned to advertise the promotion widely to reach "every single segment that is interested in a Disney park vacation," Mendenhall said.
The sophisticated, dreamy photos, featuring actors Beyonce Knowles, Scarlett Johansson and Oliver Platt, singer Lyle Lovett and soccer star David Beckham as fairy tale characters, support Disney's newest promotion, "Where Dreams Come True."
The 15-month-long promotion is designed to extend gains made during Disneyland's 50th Anniversary, which ended in September and was accompanied with a massive global marketing campaign.
Disney's Parks and Resorts division, its second-largest revenue and operating income generator, faces tough financial comparisons to the 18-month-long 50th anniversary celebration.
But Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs said last month that early data showed attendance was "looking pretty resilient."
Disney posted the first set of Leibovitz photos on Friday on Yahoo.com, and plans to publish them in the March issues of Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue, W, The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler and Cookie.
The Leibovitz photos also will be featured widely in the "Dreams" campaign, including on billboards, direct-mail ads and mobile phone content, and video from the photo shoots will play a role in the campaign, Mendenhall said.
Shares of Disney edged down 1.12 percent, or 39 cents, to $34.55 on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
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