A powerhouse session at MIPJunior today with Disney Kids & Family’s senior team, led by Ayo Davis, highlighted the company’s “holistic” approach to serving these audiences, strategy adjustments to meet the moment, and the importance of franchises, fandom, and listening to audiences.
“From First Favorites to Lasting Fandom” was moderated by Emily Horgan of The KidsStreamerSphere and featured Davis, president of Disney Kids & Family; Alyssa Sapire, head of original programming and strategy at Disney Jr.; Charlie Andrews, EVP for live action; Zack Olin, SVP for development and current series at Disney Television Animation; and Gino Guzzardo, VP for multiplatform content.
The Walt Disney Company is not “dipping in and out of” this segment, Davis stressed. “We treat it with a great sense of care and respect. At Disneyland, there’s a sense of wonderment, adventure, and joy. By extension, our storytelling creates the same experience. Our experiences live beyond those big screens kids watch all day long through consumer products, music, and live events. The company puts great effort into creating a holistic system that engages kids in a meaningful way. Disney wouldn’t be Disney without them.”
Responding to the disruption in the business, Davis and her team knew they had to “activate quickly. This audience is really important to us. We had to step outside of ourselves and actually take a look at how we were approaching our strategy. It meant looking at how we told stories with our beloved franchises, how we connected with our audience around originals, how we connected with our audience through new formats, and how our content showed up across our platforms. We couldn’t do it the same anymore. In really thinking about how we were working with our partners across the industry, we had to think about how we were going to connect with our audiences through stories that were fresh, relevant, and authentic for them, while keeping them connected and growing with the brand.”
Sapire touched on the need for “new stories, new storytellers and new formats based on what we know about preschoolers. We’re all pretty obsessed with knowing our audiences well, their passions, their interests. For preschoolers specifically, it’s about knowing where they are developmentally and finding those fresh stories to tell with those relatable, connected themes. Super Kitties is a great example of that. It has all the indicators of becoming a great franchise for us. The fandom is real. Over the last three years, we’ve seen SuperKitties grow and build. So we are in it for the long game and building out the whole ecosystem of 60-minute specials, shorts, and regular long-form. We’re also looking to extend their play with toys and other extensions.”
Davis pointed out that Disney Jr. is often audiences’ gateway to Disney. “It’s the introduction to the company and the characters. They’re sitting down in front of a screen far more before they go to the parks.”
Andrews, who leads the older-skewing live-action slate, backed up that view, noting, “Those are those core memories, those foundational things you become obsessed with when you’re 2,3, 4, and 5. My job is to take Alyssa’s demos’ hand and bring them into live action for the first time. So when they want to start watching a sitcom five years later, we have something ready for them, but with familiar IP they love, with the kind of characters they love, but reinvented for them at that age. It does all start with Alyssa. We pay so much attention to what happens there, and then see as it grows older with them in different ways.”
Olin is in charge of the animated slate for the 6 to 12 set, a time when those audiences are “starting to define their own tastes, and there’s a broad spectrum of things that they’re interested in. We know we have to deliver choice for the audience, and we do that successfully by drafting off of their interests in comedy. It’s not about delivering what we think they want. We have to listen to them and respond to them.”
Davis added that risk-taking is paramount. “You have to be willing to expand. You have to love what you do because you’re going to be pivoting on a regular basis to try to meet kids where they are.”
Andrews then elaborated on the “D-coms,” the company’s slate of live-action, tween-focused originals driven by themes such as music, fantasy, friendship, genre storytelling, and wish-fulfillment. “The fandom is so obsessive. They create memories that last a lifetime.”
“When we think about our franchises, especially D-coms, we talk about nostalgia a lot because it means so much to so many people,” Davis added. “One of the things that’s important to highlight is the great detail in ensuring that we are building for the next generation. We talk a lot about the storylines. We talk a lot about how we’re going to approach the characters, what age the characters should be, because at the end of the day, our core audience is our kids, and everything else becomes the cherry on top.”
Andrews added, “We say that kids evangelize our D-coms in such an extreme way because they know that they’re for them. It’s not for their parents, so they love it in a different way, and they want to sing the songs, watch the movie a thousand times, wear the costume, not just on Halloween, but to school. It becomes a lifestyle.”
That fandom drives repeat viewing, Davis added.
Guzzardo then discussed the shorts strategy, which runs across all demos. “We’re using shorts to get our characters out there to as many screens as possible. If it has a screen on it, we can throw a short on it. We can get our characters out there where people want to watch. A recent example of that is a new anthology short-form series called Locker Diaries. These are vertical shorts shot through characters’ lockers. It feels organic. It gives you a real immersive experience into a character’s world. You get to know them, and then what’s nice is because it’s an anthology format, we’re able to carry on that momentum between properties. So all this wonderful material across all these slates, we’re able to have kids sample the content. They become a fan of Locker Diaries. They start trusting the format. They know what to expect,” exposing them to Disney’s slate of live-action originals. “Charlie and Zack’s teams do an amazing job showing you the big world of these franchises, but sometimes it’s nice to get more of that parasocial, direct relationship with the characters. So you get to see them in a very TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts storytelling perspective.”
The executives then weighed in on the strategy for working with creators. “We know that they’re important to our audience,” Davis said. “We’re not just connecting with creators for creators’ sake. We are connecting with creators who bring something to the table that aligns with our values in the way we tell our stories; Dhar Mann and Nastya are great examples of that. With Dhar Mann, at the core, his stories are about good and evil, and so we took the thematic around good and evil, which is what we do so well, and the teams have found such great ways to apply the storytelling through those core themes that are so universal.”
Sapire added, “Nastya is so hugely popular with preschoolers. She really leans into imaginative play, which speaks to so much of what is important for preschoolers and what we infuse in our storytelling. She’s also a huge Disney fan. So we saw a great connection with her, how she’s connecting with our audience, and then now we’re developing something new with her based on those core elements that she brings to kids every day.”
Andrews’ team is also working with Nastya. “Her interests are changing,” he said. “So having content that is also for her and for her demo, as they age with her on the live action side, we’re strategic on that. We are very pointed about who we want to work with in the creator space.”
“Our goal has not changed,” Olin added. “We want to be in business with the world’s best storytellers. And to Ayo’s earlier point, we have to listen to audiences because they are responding to these storytellers.”
Amid content and format shifts, “the one thing that is going to remain steadfast is our commitment and investment to kids and families,” Davis said. “The hope really is that this company will continue to embrace those next big great kid ideas, so that we can continue shaping the future.”
Olin added, “Sometimes we hear, ‘I’m surprised Disney would do that.’ We heard that a little bit with Dragon Striker. When I hear that, instead of taking a step back, I’m actually leaning in and excited, because it means that we are challenging ourselves to listen to our audience and try new things. But it always has to go back to our core values, and as long as we stay true to that, I think we’re going to deliver on that audience expectation. Let’s surprise them.”
