In 2018, Mickey Mouse celebrated his 90th birthday. It was a big deal, both because he’s synonymous with Disney and a figurehead for the brand - but also because the milestone represented a huge business opportunity.

I was appointed to lead the Mickey Mouse franchise and working group from the end of 2017. My role was to build the UK strategy for Mickey Mouse, develop a marketing plan, leaning on our internal digital and PR teams as well as agency partners to delivery, sell the plan into stakeholders and then make our vision happen.

As Mickey Mouse is a pop-culture icon, and we were looking to predominantly grow the consumer products business, we went with a halo, adult targeted approach. The idea: lean into Mickey’s cool credentials to build excitement for the celebration, and benefit from a trickle-down effect to the high-street.

We built a campaign with multiple bursts throughout the year, launching in the summer of 2018 and running until his actual birthday (which is, in case you are interested, 18 November).

Here’s an overview of the key UK bursts.

• Launch event - Mickey inspired festival event: To kick off Mickey Mouse's 90th anniversary year, we brought over 80 of the UK's most prominent social media influencers to London's Soho for an exclusive Mickey-themed event, timed deliberately to coincide with festival season, because Mickey is a pop-culture icon and celebrities have long been proud to wear him at festivals across the globe. Guests got a first look at the Mickey and Minnie summer fashion collection alongside product displays from Beats by Dre, Spectrum make-up, Primark and H&M, plus had lots of content capture opportunities - including the chance to meet the Mouse himself. The reach was huge, our licensees loved it, and it was a reminder of why influencer marketing works when it's done properly. The right people, in the right room, with something genuinely worth talking about.

• RANKIN x Mickey Mouse collaboration, supporting Together for Short Lives: Our team partnered with renowned UK fashion photographer RANKIN to pay homage to Mickey. He captured celebrities posing with rare archive materials and current products. We published the images alongside quotes from the celebrities about their relationship to Mickey Mouse in a limited-edition book. The book was then auctioned to raise funds for one of Disney’s charity partners, Together for Short Lives. We had huge celebrities involved in the campaign - including Kate Moss, Heidi Klum, Mark Hamill and more. The activity received a huge amount of coverage, including in daily papers such as The Sun and The Evening Standard, as well as across fashion media. We also got great BTS content to use on Disney’s Facebook and Instagram channels. The activity was everywhere on the morning we announced, including on broadcast TV (as Philip Schofield was part of the book and plugged it on-air!).

• Mickey Mouse True Original exhibition: The Mickey team came up with a UK exhibition to celebrate Mickey and run over the weekend of his birthday. This would also coincide with a New York Mickey exhibition, giving us a local angle to better leverage the US activity. The London art exhibition was a free event in a gorgeous exhibition space in Shoreditch. We worked with Sotheby’s and 12 emerging artists and curated an exhibition showing rare poster artwork and new works inspired by Mickey. We had significant coverage in prestigious newspaper titles and across digital media, and then the exhibition itself was attended by hundreds of people.

In the financial year covering Mickey’s birthday, we grew the franchise to be the number brand for Disney in terms of revenue for the Consumer Products team - finishing above Frozen and Star Wars, no mean feat after many Mickey & Friends being outside the top five franchises for many years - showing the strategy and campaign paid off.