STAR WARS AND DISNEY WANTED TO DEVELOP A CAMPAIGN THAT WAS OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD
OVERVIEW
In collaboration with Disney Consumer Products and Lucasfilm, the Empire State Building helped turn Star Wars’ “March to May the 4th” campaign into a landmark-scale fan experience built for cultural attention, partner value, and commercial impact. The challenge was to create a campaign that worked equally hard for both brands: giving Disney and Lucasfilm a major New York City platform for franchise storytelling and product visibility, while driving awareness, visitation, ticket purchase, and premium brand relevance for the Empire State Building.
The result was a multi-level villains-inspired takeover that transformed the building into a full-funnel entertainment experience, featuring a celebrity lighting ceremony with Hayden Christensen, a Fifth Avenue window takeover, Hasbro and Amazon fan experiences, museum-quality LEGO Star Wars displays, a Funko Darth Vader photo moment, an exclusive screening of The Empire Strikes Back, and a dynamic light and projection show on the building’s façade synced to “The Imperial March.
SOLUTION
We turned the Empire State Building into a multi-level Star Wars destination experience, designed to drive Observatory visitation while giving Disney, Lucasfilm, and their partner ecosystem a landmark-scale platform for fan engagement, product storytelling, and cultural visibility. The campaign connected ticketed experiences, immersive activations, celebrity participation, social-first content moments, a LEGO Star Wars museum-style installation, and a large-scale light projection on the building’s façade into one cohesive takeover. Each layer gave fans a new reason to visit, share, and engage, while extending the “March to May the 4th” campaign beyond traditional media and into a real-world New York City spectacle.
MY ROLE
I led the digital strategy and end-to-end user journey for the campaign, guiding how audiences discovered, understood, and converted through the activation across social, paid media, web, and ticketing touchpoints. As a creative lead and cross-functional connector, I helped unify the campaign’s messaging, content rollout, social ideation, partner storytelling, custom landing page experience, and on-site activation elements into one cohesive fan-facing journey. I also spearheaded all photo and video shoots for the content capture of this project.
CAMPAIGN IN
ACTION
RESULTS AND IMPACT
731M+
Media Impressions
Featured by AP, GMA, Time Out, ABC7, ComingSoon
40M+
Social Engagements
Fans interacted across posts, shares, comments, and partner amplification
+38%
Ticket Sales
For the same week compared to the previous year
social channels featured
STRATEGY&
LONG-TERM VISION
Build a creative platform, not a one-off event.
The strategy was to turn the Empire State Building itself into the campaign canvas, bringing the dark side of Star Wars to life in a way that felt cinematic, premium, and impossible to ignore.
Design around audience behavior.
The campaign was built for how fans engage today: discover through social, validate through cultural relevance, purchase through a clear digital path, and share when the experience gives them something visually distinct.
Create value for every stakeholder.
For Disney and Lucasfilm, the activation supported franchise storytelling, merchandise visibility, and fan engagement. For ESB, it created a compelling reason to visit, drive ticket purchase, and reinforce premium brand relevance.
Connect spectacle to conversion.
The light projection and celebrity launch created mass attention, while social content, paid media, campaign messaging, and a custom landing page connected that attention to the Observatory experience and ticket journey.
Make the brand world feel cohesive.
The creative challenge was unifying multiple partners, products, physical spaces, and audience touchpoints into one clear fan-facing story.
Position the brand as an experiential media platform.
Long term, the campaign reinforced the Empire State Building as more than a venue: the media channel, visual asset, content engine, and destination.
