Marketing Happy Hour - 10 Social Media Storytelling Tips from Disney [Part 2]

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Part 2 - This week’s episode is inspired by an incredible guest essay from Jonathan Hurwitz, Emmy-nominated writer and creative consultant, originally featured in Rachel Karten’s Substack, Link in Bio. Jonathan spent a decade writing at Disney, and in that time, he picked up storytelling lessons that translate seamlessly into social media marketing. These tips—distilled from a presentation he gave to an agency team—are packed with actionable ways to infuse more depth, emotion, and connection into your brand’s content. From using comedy that taps into universal truths to building “full circle” narratives your audience won’t forget, we’re sharing 5 (MORE) storytelling principles you can start applying to your next post, campaign, or content calendar.Key Takeaways:Tip 6 // Comedy = Truth + Specificity – Humor that resonates comes from nuance and oddly familiar details. Aim for those “that’s me!” moments to foster audience connection.Tip 7 // There Are No New Stories – Many beloved stories are inspired by others. Stand out by infusing your brand’s unique point of view into familiar formats.Tip 8 // Theme Drives Plot and Story – Whether it’s authenticity, humor, or aspiration, your brand should own a distinct “vibe” that resonates emotionally with your audience.Tip 9 // Story Structure is Key – Understand the traditional rules of storytelling—then decide when to follow them or break them to stand out.Tip 10 // The Best Stories Come Full Circle – Opening with a question and closing with resolution delivers a satisfying audience experience and drives deeper emotional impact.____Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn: ⁠Join now⁠Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

story structure is key. Maybe there's one hero of the story. They're going through some sort of challenge. They have a guide that comes alongside them to guide them through that, and they go through that transformation and finish out the stories. Nowadays, we're saying that brands are really standing out by challenging the status quo and being a little bit different than the traditional story structure. How can you flip it on its head? How can you do something a little bit different that makes that story stand out? Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm Cassie, Consultant, Podcast and your host. Every Thursday, you'll hear episodes packed with insights from brand leaders on an array of topics, from crafting effective marketing strategies and hitting career goals, to building

leadership skills and launching your own business. Inspired by those unfiltered happy hour combos with peers, this show is all about practical, empowering chats to support your professional journey. So grab your favorite drink and let's get to the episode. Welcome back to Marketing Happy Hour. This is part two of our series on Disney storytelling tips. Again, if you are new here, if this is the first episode that you're popping into, you didn't catch part one. Go ahead and pause this one. Go back to the first part and then come back to this episode. But this is one of our favorite topics. I feel like marketing, Disney, storytelling, all the things. And we're combining them today. And I'm super excited.

Allie, welcome. Welcome back to the show, as always. Thanks, Cass. We've got our Disney Vintage if you're watching the video. We've got like some of our favorite pieces on, which is super exciting. And we've already gotten some really good response on the first episode. So part one of this. So as Cass mentioned, definitely go check that out if you haven't listened to it already. Yes. And as a reminder, so this episode and last episode is inspired and ties into a newsletter that Rachel Carton, did in her link and bio a substack and huge fans of that newsletter. So definitely check it out if you are not in there already. But she highlighted the stories and the lessons from Jonathan Hurwitz, who was a part of Disney. He worked there 10 years writing for the company. And so

he's pulled away a lot of these different strategies that we can apply to social because, as we all know, social is a form of storytelling. The content is a form of storytelling. And so So what can we take from this massive successful company that has told numerous stories over the years and apply that into our work and marketing? So excited to dive even deeper into that. And also shout out to Jonathan. He did comment on our recap of the first episode. So super excited to just have his support on this. And the essay was fantastic.

So excited to share the last five tips. Yes. Yeah. So again, we did five in the previous episode and we have five today. And so we're going to kind of dive in here. I know Allie has our first point here for us. Yes. This one's really interesting because I think humor is a way to help kind of drive nuance with a lot of our marketing. And humor is something I think particularly in the landscape right now that is really important to have. It's obviously an incredibly difficult time across the board in terms of like how

we're dealing with just societal issues in general. And so humor is a way to kind of cope with all of that, right? And so this tip particularly centers around comedy. So comedy equals both truth and specificity. And there's a moment here that Jonathan references from Inside Out actually as the working definition of good comedy. So we're inside the dad's head in the movie, if you have not seen it. Spoiler alert. And his emotions, so anger, sadness, joy, et cetera, are scrambling to kind of respond to a question from his wife. at the dinner table. And one of the dad's inner voice is panics and he's like, oh, no, she's looking at us like, play it cool, play it cool, act like you knew, you know? And the reason that we find

this so funny as an audience is because it's true. It's highly specific. And like most couples have probably experienced that at some point, right? It's like you miss the sort of like, you know, emotional cue or physical cue. And so it's kind of hard to tell people how to be funny. but when producing this content, it really helps to be as true and specific as possible with it so that people can actually resonate with that and resonate with that comedy particularly. It comes from those like nuanced, small, kind of oddly familiar details that you want your audience to kind of feel like, wait, like I see myself in that or that's me. The more you can kind of tap into your audience in that way to evoke that feeling of a shared experience, the more likely it is to spark a connection. and in turn, just more interest in your brand, right?

Give your audience the opportunity to make them feel like they're a part of the story. Yeah. And I think some of this goes into play with in your brainstorms. If there's something that you've faced or thought around a story or a product or whatever, chances are someone else has thought of that. And so being able to kind of tap into your own experiences and how can I share this and bring it to life? And also, comedy is another one too. Like if you found something funny and something happened that was funny in your life, like how can you maybe retell that story through social or just share it?

There's a number of examples here. There's also just like meme culture and all of this stuff and puns and things that you can throw into your content. Again, if you find it funny, chances are your audience may relate to that as well. So yeah, something to remember there. But tip number seven is that there are no new stories. true or false. I don't know. What do you think, Ellie? I, man, I can see this kind of both ways, and I think that's the point of the question is, like, I can see an argument for yes and I can see an argument for no, given sort of how we are consuming different stories these days and based on

the different media that we consume them in. Absolutely, yeah. No, it definitely is kind of both, like a lot of the stories that we know and love, like specifically thinking of Disney, too, it's kind of a retelling or it's an inspiration from these other stories, like quite point blank, right? So, for example, Cinderella is a previous story that was written many, many years ago. Disney brought that to life in a new way. And same with numerous other movies as well and television shows. And so I think, you know, another example, too, is wicked. You know, we talked about wicked in the last episode. It's a very relevant example. It is a movie based on a broad show based on a book. And so taking just kind of timeless content and re-envisioning it and

retelling it and putting your own unique spin on it. I think that's the key as well. It's okay to look at other brands and to look at other areas for inspiration when you're creating content, but it's all about how you can put your own unique spin on it. So yes, pay attention to the competitive landscape. Yes, pay attention to what things are happening on social in general. But try not to point blank, obviously copy that content, but again, what is a unique way that you can tell that story or even, which we'll talk about in a little bit story framework and kind of use that framework to tell your own unique story as well. The other thing maybe too that could work as well in this sense is using your team or a consumer to tell their own story.

Again, maybe the format or the story you're telling is not unique or different, but the emotion that they're feeling behind that story or the way that they're thinking about that experience of the story that you're telling could be unique to them as well. So again, inspiration is great. See what you can kind of take away from things that you've seen in the past, but put your own unique spin on it and should be authentic to you and your brand as well. For sure. And I think one of the things and one of the ways that you can do this is within our,

our eighth tip, which is on theme. The writer of Inside Out and Inside Out to Meg LaFov, I'm not sure if I'm getting that right, hopefully I am, says basically that you should be able to summarize the theme of a TV show or a movie in one word. And then when you say that word out loud to your audience, like they should feel it, like in their gut. They should know that that's what it's about.

Themes are really emotional and really personal. And it's funny because as I was prepping, particularly for this episode, and thinking about Inside Out and Inside Out 2 and how they made me feel, I felt it in my gut. As someone who's a huge fan of those films and sort of the emotional tie and resonance that I have with them, I really felt the loss of innocence from Inside Out, and I felt the rise of anxiety as a teenager and Inside Out too. And particularly those elicited that sort of emotional response from me because those were the themes of the film, right? And our social accounts can have those themes too, whether it comes down to the aesthetic or the vibe,

And I encourage you to try this. Like, if you follow an account that you really love, see if you can identify, like, what is so appealing about that account? What emotion does it evoke from you? What is the vibe that's so appealing? Is it their authenticity? Is it the way that the feed looks? Is it humor and relatability?

Chances are it's probably a mix of these. But from a theme perspective, there should be that sort of one core element of it that is driving your interest. And try to mimic this for your brand social account. What theme or what vibe are you giving that helps you kind of own your corner of the internet? We've talked a lot about that sort of unique POV, right? That is very closely related to what this theme conversation is about. So what helps you sort of own that place on the internet?

It makes you stand out amongst the other brands. Yeah. And this is why going back to my previous tip is inspiration is important and looking at what the competitive landscape looks like. critical, just to keep tabs on that, but you don't want to get so lost in that to where you lose kind of that common tone and theme and voice of your brand. And so always staying in your lane, like, what is your unique voice branding visually, but also verbally, like, how are you going to hone that? And again, to Ali's point, I think, becoming known for what that word is. Like, you say that one word and you think exactly of that brand immediately or vice versa. And

that is that's huge for sure so going into tip number nine we talk a lot about this on the podcast I'm a huge fan of story brand it's a marketing storytelling framework that I use a lot in my work but it's this concept that story structure is key so a lot of Hollywood films have a similar structure every time you watch a movie you kind of catch it you know that maybe there's one hero of the story. They're going through some sort of challenge. They have a guide that comes alongside them to guide them through that. They're navigating that journey. It kind of gets to a climax and then something happens and they go through that transformation and finish out the stories. It's very similar like, for example, Star Wars, you know, Luke Skywalker would be the

hero of the story. Yoda's kind of that guide that comes alongside him. They're going through this transformation. They're going through this journey. And so we can pull from that in order to apply a similar story structure. And that's kind of the traditional structure, which is good. However, nowadays we're saying that brands are really standing out by challenging the status quo and being a little bit different than traditional story structure. And so thinking about, you know, if you do come up with a story, how can you flip it on its head? How can you do something a little bit different that makes that story stand out, that piques interest, and that gets people staying around for more. We talk a lot about serialized content. So maybe it's expanding that story

across a number of different posts over time. And so again, I think taking the time to really understand what those traditional story rules are and then how can you break them. We referenced in last episode that there's this idea of kind of teasing what's to come. So teasing the end of your story at the beginning of a piece of content to keep people engaged throughout the whole post. Things like that that are just slightly different that you can kind of, again, spark interest, people's attention spans are so low. So how can you engage people just by doing something a little bit uniquely you as well? And I think we did that with this episode, right? We kind of teased that there was going to be part one. And then we knew that there was going to be part two coming,

but we said at the beginning of part one that part two was going to be coming next week, right? So it we were trying to basically show that this having a story structure particularly for even for podcast episodes right it's important to help kind of round them out and and give that sort of satisfaction at the end because that that keeps people engaged and keeps people excited about what's what's to come yeah absolutely um maybe this is a bad example too but we're kind of in this phase this week as we're recording this of Taylor Swift is releasing a new album. So even thinking about the story of how she's traditionally launching an album, announcing it, teasing it, the way she's doing it, this go-around is so uniquely different. She's using podcasting, ironically enough, to launch everything and to tease it.

And so she has even done this, too, where she's taken her traditional means of announcing, whether it's out an award show or on social or whatever. and she's completely flipping that. She has an extreme talent of being able to engage the fans in that way of just what people don't expect next in doing that. But that's just kind of an example of looking at your brand. How have you done things in the past? And how can you do things just a little bit different to stay fresh and unique? And yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, she's a great example of that. And we've just been chatting offline about sort of her rollout strategy on this and being so interested and excited about the fact that, first of all, she used podcasting as a kind of primary way to get this out. But also, it's important to know, like, when looking at this rollout strategy this week, it was a Taylor Nation post on Instagram. It was the podcast with Travis and Jason and the website. Other than that, like, everything else that has come from her rollout has been completely organic. So think about all the brands that have gotten in on this. Instacart has gotten in on it. Shout out Instacart. We love them.

Jeff's Bagel Run, which is a local bagel chain here in Florida, that post went off for them. I mean, you can count the brands that have gotten in on this already in the last two to three days. That speed to market and kind of like almost riding the coattails of her launch has been incredible to see. And I think just the way that she has been, she and her team know that it's going to disseminate out on other channels, despite her only using very select few is absolute marketing genius and knows that she and it shows that they know the story structure for how they want to get this album release out and start to tell through the theme which of course is like sort of this orange glittery theme that she has going on related to it like I just think it's it's absolutely genius yeah yeah and I think you

know I think about all of the content creators we're in Orlando and there's so so many people telling the same stories. You know, for example, we just opened a new theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe. And for a little bit, love all the influencers around here. But for a little bit, there were a lot of the same post going out and the same things there and the same YouTube videos. And so it's how can you, again, in the space that you're in and what you're creating and what you're building, how can you even format-wise create a different YouTube video?

How can you do something that's a little bit unique, whether it's the style of, you're filming that you're doing or the actual way that you're editing your content or whatever doing voiceovers versus on-camera stuff like there's so many different ways that you could just slightly structure um the content that you're creating that's going to stand out to people because it is a little bit different it only has to be a little bit different and so again i think that goes in with story it goes in with formatting it goes in with tone um the way you're announcing and releasing things. And so, again, it's just how can you kind of step outside of your day to day and the mundane and what you're building and growing just to be a little bit unique. And that requires

some foresight, right? Like that requires sitting down and having a brainstorm on what that content strategy and rollout looks like and what the story actually is, right? So now I'm not saying that there aren't moments where you can kind of jump on cultural trends and be maybe a little bit of ahead of that. And maybe there's a paired down version of this that you can do as a team. But I do think that having sort of that brainstorming time and that time built in to actually think about the story structure is really important. And that is the way that you're going to differentiate because you actually have to create some space for those new ideas to come through versus, you know, taking that opportunity to look at what others are doing and just do the

same thing with, you know, with your own spin on it. Absolutely. I think that brainstorming kind timing is really important for teams these days. Yeah, absolutely. Tip 10, our last tip, and this kind of plays into the entire conversation over the past two episodes. Some of the best stories, in fact, I would argue that all of them are, come full circle. The beginning of a TV show or movie is the question mark, right? And the end is the period. Those full circle moments are what drive the emotional satisfaction for viewers. So another kind of story structure that I want to call out, too, that is also related to this tip is dualingo. We're both huge, huge fans of duolingo.

What they have been doing on social is completely groundbreaking. If you don't follow them, you should. They have spent four years welcoming followers and other, you know, people who use the app regularly welcoming them into building their brand into this chaotic world of duo. Cass has a duo mask in her car. That's how big of a fan we are, the big of fans we are of this brand. Only for us to witness Duo's death in real time on February 11th, 2025. The headline for this campaign was Duo died as he lived, comma, unhinged. This is like straight from a Gen Z like playbook.

It's amazing. It's absolutely incredible. This campaign garnered 1.7 billion. owned social impressions and became Duolingo's most successful campaign to date. And that's according to Zaria Parvez, who actually was a past marketing happy hour guest and duo's global social media manager, which she has built is nothing short of incredible. And brands are looking to doolingo to seek inspiration from that and try to create that same buzz and excitement and momentum. And I would just say, you know, the best stories come full circle. If I think about

our friendship sitting here today and like now our working relationship i was a guest on this show in 2021 and that is how our friendship started um to now being a regular guest co-host with all of you um and our story has come full circle which i love including uh our story with these two episodes as well yes yes what a great pivot out of that i love it um amazing yes no this has been so much fun and i know we've done so many great series lately even just being a two episode series like i love being able to take people along for this journey and this has been so fun and um so much more to come we also have to tease like again if you're listening to the synchronological order we do have an episode with someone coming up from disney directly so excited about that it's such a great episode and i can't wait for you

all to hear it um but again i would love i think just to hear both of us would love to hear like what resonated with you in these tips the last two episodes like what stood out um message one of us on LinkedIn or both of us and let us know. And also just let us know what else you want to hear too. We would love to get your feedback on all that. Yeah, absolutely. I would just call out that I've had quite a few DMs on LinkedIn and Instagram from different listeners who have been really supportive not only for the latest episodes that we've had, but also just the topics in general. And those topics are coming directly from listeners. So please, you know, reach out to us, tell us what you want to hear. We're excited to be able to give that content back.

to you in real time. And stay tuned. We have so many exciting things in the works in the next few months leading into the second half of this year. And I cannot wait to share more. Yes. Stay tuned. Thank you for listening as always. And we'll see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level, sign up for my weekly newsletter in the show notes. you'll get weekly career and marketing insights straight to your inbox. And if you have an idea for a future marketing happy hour episode, shoot me an email. Hello at marketing happyhr.com.

Thank you again and I'll see you next Thursday.