How the Lilo & Stitch Marketing Team Avoided an Ugly Sonic Glitch

The next wave

Coming off the Super Bowl, Morrison says her team fielded a number of calls from interested parties looking to recapture some of Stitch’s chaos magic. But they had already planned for the campaign’s next beat to be more story-focused and emphasize the film’s human stars—specifically Maia Kealoha as Lilo and Sydney Agudong as her older sister, Nani. Those characters were prominently featured in the first full trailer, which debuted with the release of Snow White in March.

“Once the story spot was out there and people understood there was a balance, it was Stitch Mania starting from the end of April to now,” Morrison laughs.

Stitch’s return to the spotlight was aided by an animatronic version developed by Industrial Light & Magic. That’s the critter that moviegoers saw wreaking havoc in movie theaters during the opening weekend of Thunderbolts,* aka The New Avengers. But Stitch also helpfully scanned movie tickets in between the G-rated mayhem.

ILM’s animatronic later made appearances at the Lilo & Stitch press junket and on the red carpet at the movie’s world premiere in L.A.

“Part of the fun is taking Stitch out in the world and allowing fans to interact with him and seeing their response,” Morrison says of orchestrating those social media-friendly moments. “We wanted people to capture it with their cameras and talk about it.”

And more of those appearances are on the way after the movie’s release. Morrison promises that Disney will definitely be taking advantage of 626 Day on June 26—named for Stitch’s experiment number.

“We’ll have some activity around that,” she teases.

Her team will also be re-creating a 2004 stunt promoting the opening of the Stitch’s Great Escape ride at Walt Disney World by wrapping Cinderella Castle in toilet paper. One caveat: This latest TP job is a digital exclusive since papering the real castle is a complicated engineering feat.