Disney Partners with Hypebeast
With the support of actor & musician Will Gao, Disney has partnered with Hypebeast to commemorate Disney Donald Duck’s 90th anniversary alongside the full Mickey & Friends line up – celebrating friendship, individuality and authenticity.
Through a Hypebeast Dairies feature video, the Emmy-award nominated actor touches on his childhood love for cartoons, the preservation of meaningful relationships – and the importance of championing for more representation in the creative industry. Using his band Wasia Project as inspiration, Gao invites fans behind the scenes as the music collective prepare for a fundraiser performance, ahead of their current world-wide tour.
The short is interspersed with archive Wasia footage, noting the band’s longstanding connection and appreciation for one another, as well as a look into Will’s creative process at his South London home.
Disney invites fans to be inspired by the iconic Mickey & Friends line up – who for nine decades have cultivated genuine relationships that allow their true selves to shine. Stay tuned as these iconoc characters continue to show up in the realist of ways, in particular as we prepare for Donald Duck’s big 9-0. If you can’t wait, visit the links below to shop looks from the same collection as Will’s shoot and be prepared for more products to drop soon on ASOS!
Nigel Cook, VP Brand Commercialisation and Retail, Disney Consumer Products EMEA:
“Mickey & Friends are synonymous with friendship, authenticity and self-expression, and while their style has evolved with each new generation the principles of celebrating each other and being their authentic selves remain at their core.
“The launch of this Mickey & Friends campaign captures that ethos in a new light, and is aimed definitively at Gen Z. We’ve collaborated with emerging actor and musician Will Gao to explore what friendship and self-expression mean to him as a young creative, and reflect on those character traits that we know and love from Mickey Mouse. What’s more, we’re bringing the campaign to Gen Z via the channels we know they love, and in collaboration with one of pop culture’s most exciting outlets, Hypebeast – meeting our target audience where we know we’ll have most impact.
“It’s incredibly important that Disney stays connected to this younger demographic, as crucial drivers of popular culture and an increasingly influential audience with ever-growing purchasing power. Thanks in part to the current trend for ‘newstalgia’, we continue to see appetite from young consumers for Mickey merchandise, from ASOS, H&M and Desigual apparel to Dunelm Disney Home accessories and across the publishing and games categories. And we’re always looking for ways to open up product possibilities and offer Gen Z that creative freedom, individuality and self-expression we know they value.
“Mickey & Friends’ ninety plus years of success speaks volumes for the characters’ versatility and universal appeal to young consumers. We’re confident that this exciting collaboration reinforces the ‘exceptional eight’s’ relevance with Gen Z and will open up further consumer products possibilities for years to come.”
