Marketing Happy Hour - 4 Marketing Lessons from Disneyland Handcrafted (and the Power of Storytelling)

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

In this episode, Ally and I break down the marketing and brand lessons hidden inside Disneyland Handcrafted, the new documentary directed by Leslie Iwerks that captures the extraordinary effort, craftsmanship, and storytelling behind the creation of Disneyland. Using never-before-seen footage and audio, the film elevates the often unnamed people who brought Walt Disney’s impossible idea to life — and offers a masterclass in legacy brand storytelling. Whether you’re a Disney fan or not, this conversation explores why the best brands are built on emotional resonance, attention to detail, and stories that actually need to be told — and how marketers today can apply those lessons to content, customer experience, and the products they’re building.Key Takeaways:// Every brand is built on story — but not every story has been told yet: The most compelling marketing often comes from uncovering overlooked perspectives: your team, your customers, or the behind-the-scenes work that rarely gets credit.// Behind-the-scenes content builds trust, not just engagement: Showing the process — the challenges, pivots, and craftsmanship — creates authenticity and emotional connection far more than polished outputs alone.// Attention to detail isn’t optional — it is the brand: From product design to social media responses, every interaction teaches your audience what to expect from you.// Happiness is future-proof: Brands that create moments of joy, escape, or ease — even through content — build lasting relevance in uncertain times.// Great marketing is hospitality: How you treat your audience, respond to feedback, and show up consistently matters just as much as the message itself.// Legacy brands last because they invest in craft, not shortcuts: Long-term trust is built through care, patience, and respect for the people behind the work — not trend-chasing.Connect with Cassie: LinkedInConnect with Ally: LinkedIn____Join the MHH Collective! The MHH Collective is a community for marketers and business owners to connect, ask real questions, and grow their careers together. Join for access to live Q&As with industry experts, a private Slack community, and ongoing resources: https://www.marketinghappyhr.com/mhh-collectiveSay hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - We 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 the MHH Collective: ⁠Join now⁠Get the latest marketing trends, open jobs and MHH updates, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Walt very much did not skimp on attention to detail, hospitality, and how you treat people. You go to the parks and you realize how much detail is put into every single square inch of this park. And so I think it's not only that, it's the content that you're putting out. It is making sure everything's spelled correctly. Is the experience buttoned up from start to finish in a way that we would want to put it out there? There's no amount of great marketing that is going to save poor business, poor customer service, poor experience. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour, a weekly podcast helping marketing professionals and entrepreneurs build better strategies and hit career goals. I'm Cassie and I'm Allie.

We're marketers and your hosts through these unfiltered convos with your peers and experts in the space. Let's dive in. Grab your favorite drink and let's get to this week's episode. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. We have an exciting episode. It's just Ellie and I today, super excited to dive into today's episode. And I want to tell you if you are a Disney fan, we have a treat for you. If you are not a Disney fan, stick around anyways. I think this episode's going to be incredibly valuable. We talk a lot about storytelling and just some lessons that we've learned from the company. Before we get started, a couple housekeeping things. Number one,

we would greatly appreciate it. If you have not left us your feedback and a review on on either Spotify or Apple, head to the show notes. And we would love for you to quickly do that and just get your thoughts on the show. It also just helps us to grow and to stand out in the podcast feeds. That is all we ask in return for this value. So please, if you don't mind doing that, that would be awesome. And with that, Allie, hello. I'm not welcoming you this time.

I'm done welcoming you. We're here all the time. We're done welcoming. We're done with the welcoming. Yes. Yes, I am here permanently. Yay. Yay. How are you?

I'm good. I'm cold. It's, you know, we live in central Florida, which typically you do not hear cold in central Florida in the same sentence. However, it is pretty freezing today. So I'm good. I'm tired. You and I, we had a brand shoot this morning that we worked on. So that was fun. But excited.

Up nice and early. Yes. On a holiday. We love it. I know, no less. We're still working on a holiday. We promise we take time off, but today was not one of those days. But that's okay.

Today was not one of those days, yes. Yes. But I'm excited. I have one of our new brand friends, Brous, their German craft soda, the apple soda today. And it's amazing. I absolutely love it. There's like some lemon in here with the apple. It's awesome.

And yeah, just absolutely love it. Yep. A big fan. I have the malt soda. I've had the apple soda. I love the apple soda. I really love this. It's very different. And so if you're looking for just like a fun, different beverage, check it out. Big fan. I think I stumbled upon them through pop-up market. Pop-up. Grocer? Pop-up. Grocer? Thank you. Yes. I found them through pop-up grocer, which if you were looking to find a new brand to try, that is your place. So yeah, no, super excited. We love trying new things. We have a lot of new beverages that we're going to be trying on the show in the coming weeks. So stay tuned. I also love that this doesn't have like added sugar as well. It's just what comes from the actual apple juice and lemon, which I absolutely love. That's my favorite. Yeah, absolutely. We love a good for you soda for sure.

Well, so let's dive in to this conversation. Again, today we're going to be talking about a new film that came out centered around Disneyland, a place that you and I both know and love very well. So we are very grateful we got to attend the Orlando premiere of this film last week. We got to see the film, of course. We got to meet Leslie Adworks, who directed the film. We got to see a bunch of friends in the theme park community. It was a fantastic time, but this film was awesome. So excited to kind of talk a little bit about the film, but mostly just wanted to.

to have this conversation discussing what we learned as marketers and brand builders from the film itself. Yeah, absolutely. There were many moments where you and I were like kind of looking at each other, but not fully looking at each other because we were in tears. I think this is one of those movies that takes you, you know, from the day one to opening day of Disneyland, which I think is such a unique perspective in terms of the footage that was kind of lost and then found by Leslie.

And to be able to meet her, the entire event just start to finish was excellent. And such a treat for you and I who are so passionate about the brand and the storytelling around Disney. Yeah. So really quickly, I just want to read a brief, very brief description of this film just to kind of paint the picture of what this is. So Disneyland Handcrafted Reveals the Extraordinary Artistry and Grit. It took hundreds of craftspeople to bring Walt Disney's. impossible dream project of Disneyland to fruition from groundbreaking to opening day on July 17th, 1955. The documentary captures both the legacy and nostalgia of the year leading up to the creation

of Disneyland Resort, directed by Leslie Iworks, whose father and grandfather both worked closely on this project. I believe her grandfather also was good friends with Walt and worked directly with him and possibly her father too i'm trying to remember uh i think i think that's right yeah um so it's just cool to kind of hear stories passed down um that you don't really hear on a regular basis we hear all those kind of typical stories that you hear about waltz and um the development of Disneyland but she really peels the curtain back they did not record any new interviews for this so they took all of this never be seen never before seen footage uh they colorized it they were worked with Skywalker Sound to add audio to it.

And it's this very emotional, very descriptive, like you just kind of, I don't know, it's hard to explain, but it's, it is wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful. And you really feel kind of the stress and the worry throughout the story that Walt was feeling and the team was feeling leading up to the opening. And even just seeing, you know, two months out, for example, three months out, how not close to a typical.

person viewing this, they seemed, but they pulled it together and they made it happen. So it's really just this lesson on never giving up on your dream and keep going and persistence and also just celebrating the people who we don't often hear about that helped develop this park. So it was really special. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of crazy. And you and I obviously are incredibly connected to the material, but to be able to actually see what it looked like two months before opening and be like, how on earth are they going to finish this? And in the dedication that actually went behind it

to make sure that they could open the doors on July 17th was just incredible. And one thing that's so unique about Leslie is because her family has been so heavily involved with the Disney legacy, she has such a unique view of the material itself. And she's so connected to it emotionally, but also to know that her family members

were actually there and they're in the footage for her. to be the one that's actually, you know, directing this film and taking this footage that had never been seen by the public and putting it out there for everyone to see. I think you had mentioned how some of it was colorized. That was one of the really cool features for me personally watching it was to take it from that black and white and actually put it with color and to see, like, the vibrancy from all of the colors, particularly on Main Street and of the castle. I thought that was incredible, especially because the actual opening day broadcast was in black and white

to be able to see some of that footage from just when they were building in color was such a treat. Really, really special. Yeah, absolutely. And I think just overall, you know, in business and in building a business, you hear a lot of lessons pulled from Walt Disney and just from the company in general. and I think there's a reason why what he established and put in place is still relevant to today. There's a lot of just foundational principles that I think marketers can learn from brand builders, customer service, et cetera, really no matter what area or industry of business that you're in. And so that's literally what we're going to talk about today.

We're going to break down a few different points that we pulled out or things that we heard Leslie say or someone else say that really stuck with us that I think can be able to. applied to what we are doing digitally in person as we're promoting and building community around brands, et cetera. So I'm excited to dive into these points today. Me too. Me too. Yeah. So first things first, the first lesson, if you will, that we pulled out is just the importance of telling stories that need to be told. So Leslie actually was talking about this. And this film is an example of that need. It is saying and looking at just typical material that you see around the creation of Disneyland and there's a lot of focus on Walt and some of those iconic people, which is awesome,

and we love hearing their stories. However, there wasn't typically a look into the other people involved in developing this park and in this company. And so that's one thing that she wanted to do. She wanted to reveal some of these unnamed people, show them working firsthand. And that is kind of what she does with her production company as a whole. That's one of her missions, which I find really awesome. And I think that's a lesson that we can take as marketers of figuring out different angles to stories or different people to highlight that we've never highlighted before, whether it's team members or consumers in the community.

etc. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of unique perspective, I think that can come from doing so. And it's also just celebrating the people that should be celebrated that we maybe sometimes unfortunately forget to celebrate, right? So I think that was a really important reminder. Yeah, I agree. And I think as we were watching the film, you don't realize how many hundreds of people were actually working on like making the lines in between brick. Like, I mean, just the the most minute details possible. And what this film does is actually focuses on some of those individual people as you're, you know, getting closer to opening day, you're seeing like one specific land in the,

in the individual people that were working on that land and how they were laying, you know, palms or things like that, like for Adventureland, right? Like, they were laying actual palms, like on top of the buildings. I mean, just the most, the most minute details. And what struck me most about that was we don't really have, or we didn't currently have any media that really, from the Disneyland perspective, that really helped kind of storytell around those individual craftspeople. And I think it is so indicative of where the company's at as well in taking that more behind the scenes approach. I know there are other divisions of the company as well that are starting to do more of this type of storytelling. So, for example, Imagineer, Waltese Imagineering has started the we call it Imagineering series,

where they're actually showcasing individual Imagineers and projects they're working on, and that's a YouTube content series, some more long form that they're kind of splitting up and putting across their social channels. But what's helpful about that is you get that sort of inside, behind the scenes, look that as one as a fan, but also as a marketer, I think you and I just respond so well to because we love to see the sort of process of how things are made. and how things get done. And the people behind it, it makes it, it makes it that much more special. There's an emotional connection because you're invested in the folks that are actually putting these monumental landmarks together.

And I think it's just, it's so indicative of where the company's at, too. So while the footage was taken in 1955, as you mentioned, those same principles are still there today. And that is legacy brand storytelling at its finest. And Leslie, with her, again, as you mentioned, just sort of her production, style and her directing elevates this in a way that is, um, is, is so special for, for the company. Yeah. It adds to the impact of, of a brand or project, right? So, and it also humanizes what you're doing. So I think the more that you can allow humans in the community

to connect with more humans behind a project, I think that's really important. Um, you know, another Disney Plus, uh, film is, uh, Taylor Swift's docu series that came out around the airs. This is a prime example of this, and we see this a lot with documentaries, right? But yes, the film is about her. The film is about the ERIS tour. However, it is also about each individual dancer and artist on stage. And so I thought it was kind of cool how they dove into their individual stories. And you start to hear these things that you've never heard before about these people.

And it just makes the ERIS tour that much more grand and important because you see what it took for all of these individuals to get there. also the work it took, et cetera. And so again, I think it adds to that that impact. But yeah, lots of ways that you can do this on social and newsletters, creating a specific product or offering centered around elevating and allowing your team to contribute to it and let people get to know them. There's a lot of ways you can do this, I think. For sure, for sure. I think we see it across different different channels at Disney already, but I also know that there are tons of other brands that are taking this more behind the scenes approach. I think when we talked to Jessica Serrano from Digin, she had mentioned that they were highlighting some of the chefs behind the scenes and giving folks

kind of a more one-on-one relationship with the people that are actually making their food. I thought that was like a really, really unique way of using this sort of behind-the-scenes approach that really, again, humanized the, humanized the brand. Pivoting a little bit, this was my favorite quote from the event, which actually came from Leslie's Q&A after. So she was actually, she was kind enough to stay and take a Q&A with the audience, which I thought was just incredible, just to hear sort of some of the other folks in the room. So there were cast members. There were creators. There were other folks from media outlets.

And the questions that they were asking were just, again, emotional resonance in terms of having the connection to the, you know, to the Disney brand, but also Disneyland as a whole in terms of the park itself. And one of the questions centered around, you know, how do you think Walt would feel like knowing that this, you know, this documentary is now out in the world? And Leslie responded with something that, you know, I essentially want to get tattooed on my body. I think it is so special and so true from a marketer's perspective.

And that is that happiness is future proof. I felt so I kind of, you and I both paused. I like quickly wrote it down. in my phone as a note because I wanted to make sure I didn't forget it. There is, there's something so unique about that quote. It is the notion of how can you create this long term happiness in your interactions, whether it be either an in-person setting or an offline setting with this product that you're building. And I think what Walt knew and how Leslie responded to this was that Walt actually knew that happiness was future proof. The shelf life of happiness would extend past when he was here.

and Disneyland would live on past when he was here because happiness will always be the number one thing that we are chasing as a consumer, as a society, as a people. And I thought that was so incredibly impactful and just shows how his brain worked from a business perspective in terms of the things that he was planning for when he wasn't even like necessarily thinking about that. So I say that and that was really my, my main take away from this whole event was in the film in general was that there is such a strong resonance with how you're essentially thinking about building your business and the things that you can do to help give it a longer shelf life outside of just the you know the marketing tactics you have or the things that you keep building on so yeah absolutely that yeah it kind of goes aligned with

the episode we did on 2026 trend predictions of yes economics. Like how can you create little joys just for consumers, whether it's with like merch or cute things that you're developing or even just with your interactions? I think one simple way is with your content, of course, you can create happiness through bringing, you know, brevity and lightness to the content that you're developing and just allowing people to have an escape when they're watching your content, right? That's one way. Another way, too, is just treating people with kindness. You know, if a consumer DMs you, calling them out by name, you know, thanking them for purchasing a product or considering purchasing a product, just increasing the positivity around

the interactions, like you said, Ali, on what you're having on and offline. But I think there's a number of ways to do this. Disney, we always say this all the time, Disney is definitely escapism for a lot of people, we go there to get away to embrace this fantasy, even just for a day, for example. And so how can you create that for people as well with your brand? And there's a number of ways to do that. And so, of course, you may not be building a theme park, for example, or something to that, that nature, but you can still infuse that joy, that happiness and that kindness in what you're doing. Anybody who's watching via video just saw me grin so so hard at escapism. You know, I certainly relate like very deeply to that as a one as a Pisces, but two, as

somebody that is so, you know, connected to the brand. Even I find, you know, you and I will go after work one day and we'll just walk in and that form where I feel like nothing else in the world matters except for the fact that we're here for the next four hours until the end of the next. like it's a it's a wonderful feeling and and I again feel very grateful that we have access to the Orlando parks here but I do also feel that way in California and it keeps you and I coming back year after year even though we're on the opposite coast I think there is such a testament to that and you and I certainly are the blueprint for what that looks like in terms of that connection

to to the brand and to the escapism and that feeling of of being so interconnected Yeah, and I want to make something really clear, like you don't have to be an experiential brand in order to do this for people. I think even if you're just completely online, you're offering similar to us, you're offering some sort of media experience, something that someone watches or consumes on a weekly basis. You can still do something with that. Again, by not only the interactions that you're having, but just the atmosphere that you're building, the positivity is it's in the way that you talk. It's in the way that you carry yourself. It's in the way that you interact with people online. And so, yes, obviously, if you are an in-person experiential experience,

making sure that that experience is buttoned up from the moment they buy their ticket all the way to the event date. But even if you were just completely online, like, do not forget that that can happen there. And that goes with that attention to detail, which is the next point that we have here. Another thing that Leslie was just emphasized, is that Walt very much did not skimp on attention to detail, hospitality, and how you treat people. This is something I've learned from a lot of my mentors, again, who have worked for Disney, tied to Disney, that every single detail matters. You go to the parks and you just see, you kind of look closely at a building, you know, even within three square inches and you realize how much

detail is put into every single square inch of this park. And so, So I think it's not only that it's the content that you're putting out. It is making sure everything's spelled correctly. Are the colors aligned as the experience buttoned up from start to finish in a way that we would want to put it out there? I think it's not pushing campaigns until they're ready. There's a lot of ways that this can be adapted and utilized in business and in marketing. But again, customer service on and offline is a big one. Are you smiling when you first greet people, when people walk into your business, and then same thing online.

If someone DMs you, how are you treating them? How are you talking to them? So this is something I'm very passionate about. And I always tell people all the time, there's no amount of great marketing that is going to save poor business, poor customer service, poor experience. And so please, like when you are developing a strategy, if you're working for a brand, don't just pay attention to the that you're creating and building, like actually look at the experience and what's happening. Like, what are consumers saying? What questions are they asking? What concerns do they have? And don't be afraid to suggest some ideas for buttoning up that experience so that when you go to market something, the goal is to market to drive people to the business and keep them coming back for more. And the way

you're going to get them to come back for more is if you have that attention to detail, you have great hospitality, and you just create a fantastic experience all around for people. So I, uh, we'll get off my soapbox for a minute. But this is, this is very important to me. So, no, honestly, I,

I didn't, I'll admit, I didn't have a lot of information or informed, um, kind of experiences about sort of the hospitality and, and how you treat people. And I learned so much of that from you in our, the early days of our friendship when you would tell me about your experience on the

Disney college program and how that taught you so much about these, these two things and in working directly. with guests and working in the park. And I found it so fascinating to hear your experience in it. And I see how it comes through and how you market yourself, but also the work you do for clients. And so I think it's such a testament to what the company stands for and how they are known for that. And I think that now extends across all of their business lines, right? So think cruise line, think the international parks, think Adventures by Disney and all of the other business lines that they now have in revenue streams they now have that are centered around these core principles of the company

and how it even now, you know, not to not to age you, but like in terms of how long ago the college program was, right? But like even now it still sticks with you and it's it's still something that you feel so passionately about. And I think that, you know, that to your point around every detail mattering, I think we've gotten away from that in a lot of ways to be a little bit more raw and edgy, but I do think there are still ways to be detail-oriented and especially on the customer service side in brushing up those hospitality skills and ways to connect with the consumer. And particularly in the trends episode, you know, we reference so much of the sort of online marketing and the offline marketing of it all and why marketing happy, you know, MHS Collective is

is so, you know, important to what it is that you and I are doing in the community we're building. it's it's hugely important for the industry yeah a quick like two second side tangent just on leadership this is absolutely it's a leadership and culture thing for sure and i think as leaders if you are a leader listening please remember that you have the opportunity to remind each and every team member no matter how entry level that they are how they contribute to the bigger goals of a company and i think that's one of the quickest and easiest ways to motivate teams to have this as an importance for themselves as well, right? Like, I can't tell you how many times I interact with a business.

And if someone does not realize that their role matters and that what they do has an impact on business, it does. Because if you didn't have that person, something would fall apart, even if it's small, right? And so I think then leaders need to just remind their teams in marketing and business in general, hey, this is how you contribute. This is how your role is impactful. you and that can kind of like spark that light of motivation to just do one one percent better right but it's um it's important like i mean we think about all of this uh these stories like for example

the fire festival right this is such a general example but the marketing for that like you saw the marketing for that it looked incredible right everyone's like yes catch me there i'm so excited and then they got to the fire festival and it was not that. And so that's that is just, that's an extreme example, but that is an example of how marketing and operations and sales and all these departments need to be speaking. And if your experience that you're presenting online through marketing does not match the experience that they're going to receive when they show up at your door, like there's going to be a major problem. And so that is one thing for Disney, for example, you get what you see, right? Like you go through this fantasy land,

literally, and you have this amazing experience. You see characters everywhere. You feel excited and happy and stuff. And that's because they have a very seamless, just engine running of operations does something different. They're able to kind of communicate it properly. And so even if you're not at the scale of Disney, you can still create that kind of system in your business.

But I could do a whole episode on this. But yeah, this is very important to me this topic. topic. I was just thinking, as you said that, I was like, we could do an entire episode just on like park operations and the people that work behind the scenes. And I think part of what makes this documentary so great is the authenticity that flows through it in terms of showcasing those moments of, you know, Walt, you know, in a lot of these interviews, they said, you know, Walt is so stressed. It's not going to get completed on time. We're working seven days a week. We are completely work to the bones, sunrise to sunset. How are we going to make this happen?

But I think the reason that this feels, this gives us that emotional kind of response is because even though you know at this point in 2026 that Disneyland opened on time, you still feel that, oh my gosh, are they going to get it done? How is this going to happen in a year? How on earth are they going to be able to do this? And it's because of that authenticity factor where they show the sort of the setbacks, oh, no, this didn't look right, or we weren't able to get this in on time and installed on time. They showcased the sort of trials and tribulations of it all, but also ultimately that payoff of the win on opening day when Walt does the dedication speech, right? And I think that is the, that is what people will respond to most with this film is the authentic nature. And

that comes directly from Leslie, from a directorial standpoint, but also the folks that actually contributed to this film. So, for example, one of, you know, the original Imagineers and still a part of Club 55 are wonderful Bob Gur, who we love and adore so much. Bob speaks in the film quite a few times about his challenges in terms of trying to make things work at the attraction level, even, in terms of like cars, Spratopia, or the Haunted Mansion doom buggies. And it's an incredible look inside. at how it's people problem solving and trying to get things done on a certain deadline to make sure that this wonderful thing is brought into the world. And that is that is authenticity

at its finest for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And people connect with that, right? Like you go to Disneyland, you go to Disney World and you say, oh, look how great these parks are. But you don't think about what it took to make them or to develop them. And so I think by peeling the curtain back a little bit, And this is, of course, kind of look different depending on the business that you work in. But just being able to humanize your business a little bit and create that relatability, I think, is important. And you can especially do this really well if you have a founder or a spokesperson from the brand, creating content around building the business. I think this is a really great way to do that.

You can share some of the lessons learned, the setbacks or the, hey, this almost never got launched, and here's why, and here's what we learned through that. there's a lot of stories to be told through that. And I think that just creates a little bit more connection with the audience by being authentic. I hate using authentic too much because it is a buzzword, but it is so important, right? Like there's a reason we use it a lot. And so I think there's different ways to create that experience.

But I tell you, like, it's funny, you hear about the dream at the beginning of the film and then you feel stressed for 80% of the, the film and then at the end you see it all come together and it's like that that is life like that is completely normal um just a park opening one day and it looking perfect is not the full picture right so how can you just tell the full story in a way that that makes sense for your audience and just um humanizes and creates that connection a little bit more yeah yeah there's almost that that kind of hybrid of you know part of the part of the destination is the the journey? Is that the, like, the right quote, right? And like the journey of them taking it from

it just being an orange grove to being, you know, one of the most successful parks in the entire world in terms of, you know, themed entertainment and attractions. It's, it's incredible. And, again, you know, just so grateful that we had the opportunity to see it early with the screening, but also to, you know, to get to meet Leslie and, you know, a few of our other friends and people that we admire so, so greatly that are a part of this company and doing such great work and bringing these stories to life. Very grateful. Feeling very, very grateful for the experience. Absolutely. No, it was amazing. And there's so many other lessons that I'm sure we could pull from. Oh, my gosh. At least Disney in general. So we'll think of more things as they come up and do some future

episodes on this. But yeah, very, very thankful to have seen this. I can't wait to watch it again. It does come out. If you are watching this, the day it releases, it comes out today or it's already out January 22nd, 2026. So head to Disney Plus. Check out Disneyland Handcrafted again. It's just whether you're a Disney fan or not, it's a really great lesson in overcoming challenges, the benefit of just handiwork and team rapport and getting a team together rallied around a dream and just seeing your dreams to fruition. So it's awesome. But definitely check it out. And thank you for listening. We really appreciate you guys. And thank you for allowing us to share in something we love so much and just occasionally pop on and talk about Disney,

our other love besides marketing. So, very grateful to be able to do this. Yes. And let us know what you think. If you decide to watch the, if you decide to watch Disneyland Handcrafted, please let us know what you think. We would love to chat back and forth with you so much to kind of unpack in this. And like you said, I think there's more we can talk about, of course.

But yeah, we'd love to hear from you if you enjoyed it and what you thought. Yeah. Shoot us a message. Let us know. And as always, we will see you next Thursday here on Marketing Happy Hour. Staying. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Marketing Happy Hour. If you enjoyed it, make sure you're subscribed to the show and sign up for a weekly newsletter with insights and marketing resources. We also invite you to check out the MHH collective, our community for marketers looking to connect, grow, and live. learn together. Check out the links in the show notes. We'll see you next time.