Rogue One

When the second trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story dropped in October, it was a viral sensation. Within four days, the two-minute 37-second clip drew 41 million online views, tens of hundreds of thousands of comments, and the kind of media attention that would make even Donald Trump jealous.

     It may seem like an inevitable outcome for a movie franchise with such a huge fanbase, but anyone inside the industry knows that it was actually the result of a carefully calibrated, strategic marketing campaign. The man behind the plan: Asad Ayaz ’00, executive vice president of marketing at Walt Disney Studios and master movie marketer of the Captain America sequel, The Jungle Book, which had one of the top spring opening weekends in industry history, The Avengers film franchise, and the Angelina Jolie-starring Sleeping Beauty remix, Maleficent, among countless others.

    But these promotions more than meet the assumption of what movie marketing is. TV commercials and trailers at movie theaters no longer guarantee an audience. Reaching viewers in the new media landscape requires more ingenuity and creativity than ever before. “There’s so much happening in the world and on all the different screens. To get attention you have to find a way to stand out,” Ayaz explains.   

    “You have to eventize a movie.”

    Take for example the promotion of Rogue One. The movie takes place in the Star Wars universe but is a standalone film with different characters. One of the marketing challenges, he says, was to make the connections to Star Wars clear while at the same time creating a new narrative.

    For Captain America: Civil War Ayaz and his team encouraged Twitter users to hashtag a preference, Captain America or Iron Man. As a reward for sharing, fans received a personalized video greeting from one of the 1,000 greetings recorded by some of the most popular actors in the country. The event engaged movie fans in an innovative way, but also attracted attention and buzz.

    “Movie marketing is basically selling a story,” Ayaz explains. “We introduced some more elements in the trailer, but we are very restrained in how much we are showing. We never want to give too much away.”

    A tightly produced trailer that tells just enough of the story to leave viewers wanting more is vital. But crafting a story to tell is only part of it. As important is figuring out how to tell the story to as many people as possible. To do that Ayaz creates compatible roll-out strategies engineered to stoke anticipation with well-timed teasers and a series of trailers that build to the movie’s release.

    “So much detail goes into how we roll it out and how we build momentum,” he says, sharing the recipe, which is part art and part timing. “You want people to be red-hot excited by the time the movie comes out.”

    In particular his team looks to a crucial moment and what matters most to studios backing the blockbusters: opening weekend.

    When Advertising Age interviewed him last winter for their 40 Under 40 issue, he explained: “When we work on a film campaign, there are a lot of voices in the process—filmmakers, executives, agents, talent. And I think it’s really keeping your eye on the prize—your opening weekend. You have to have a smart, sustained plan for the success of the movie and not necessarily on making specific personalities happy.”

    Ayaz, a self-described “comic book kid,” started at Disney in the home entertainment division in 2004, the height of the DVD business. Since then he has gone from director of brand marketing to vice president for global marketing strategy and communications to senior vice president of marketing to executive vice president of marketing. Following Disney’s 2009 acquisition of Marvel Entertainment and the 2012 edition of the Star Wars franchise that resulted from the company’s purchase of Lucasfilm, Ayaz
was selected to head marketing for all live-action, non-animated films released by the studio—his dream job.

    So what’s next? Promoting one of the most anticipated films in history—Star Wars: Episode VIII.

    Stay tuned.