Plus: Crocs brings mascot to life with new miniseries; skeptics wary of Meta’s AI vision.
Disney is taking the idea of an immersive brand experience quite literally.
The company and Epic Games launched a new experience Sunday that connects the physical Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride at Disneyland and Walt Disney World with a new Star Wars adventure inside Fortnite called “Smugglers Gambit.” Disney announced the activation over the weekend at its D23 fan event.
“Smugglers Gambit is definitely a first step and not a finish line,” Julia Humphreys, vice president of production at Disney Digital Entertainment, told TechRadar. “With this foundational experience we wanted to prove out something that we’ve believed for a long time: that a story doesn’t have to end when you leave the park, and it doesn’t have to start over from zero when you pick up a controller.”
In other words, what guests do inside the theme park follows them into the game.
For example, visitors can accept a special mission while waiting for Smugglers Run through the Disneyland or My Disney Experience app. During the ride, they collect virtual crates based on their performance. After linking their Disney and Epic Games accounts, those crates translate into rewards they can use in Smugglers Gambit.
Disney already has an established relationship with Epic Games, including its $1.5 billion investment in the company announced in 2024.
Why it matters: Brands have been dedicating more time creating these immersive or “phygital” experiences (physical + digital). Disney is showing what this looks like in practice by connecting those two experiences.
It’s a compelling idea all around, even for organizations without Disney’s budget. Communicators should think about what happens after someone interacts with their brand.
An event, conference or other in-person activation doesn’t have to end when someone walks out the door. Give people something to share, continue or experience on another platform and one interaction can spark a much longer relationship.
How is Crocs using its mascot Niles in brand storytelling?
If you’re a Crocs fan, you’re probably aware of Niles, a crocodile figure that’s been used by the brand for the past 25 years. But now Crocs is bringing Niles to life.
Marketing Dive reports the footwear company is using Niles as a recurring part of its social content, live experiences and other brand storytelling.
Niles made his debut in a social-first microseries filmed at Crocs headquarters, where he interacts with real employees and navigates office life.
Crocs said it developed Niles more like a sitcom character, giving him his own personality, interests, flaws and ambitions.
“Niles has been hiding in plain sight for nearly 25 years,” Crocs Chief Brand Officer Terence Reilly said. “After all that time, we figured he deserved a promotion from rivet to real life.”
CMO Carly Gomez added: “Niles represents a long-term investment in scalable intellectual property that can grow alongside our brand and community.”
The move gives Crocs a recognizable character it can plug into social trends, events, entertainment and future campaigns without starting from scratch each time. It also gives the brand more ways to tell stories that aren’t directly about selling shoes.
This is an example that shows why organizations should look at recognizable pieces of their brand they can use in other areas. There’s an opportunity to turn those brand elements into recurring characters, formats or ideas audiences can build a relationship with over time, which helps create stronger loyalty and awareness.
Why are people skeptical of Meta’s vision for AI?
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500-word essay last week laying out an optimistic vision for AI, including a future where “everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about.”
But the reaction was skeptical. On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, reporter Rebecca Bellan argued that part of the problem is Meta’s track record. “You look back to the social media days, (Zuckerberg) was saying that he wants to make sure that everyone has an outlet for talking to their friends and having a social network,” she said. “And what do we have instead? We have ragebaiting and advertisements, not connection.”
The issue for Meta is bigger than whether people believe in AI. It’s whether they believe Meta’s version of that future. TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec said Zuckerberg’s manifesto “didn’t strike the right note for a lot of people” because it painted AI as an almost universally positive force without spending much time on the costs or tradeoffs.
The outlet noted that this kind of reaction has become common when tech leaders make sweeping predictions about how AI will reshape everyday life. Big visions only work when audiences trust the messenger and can see themselves in the future being described. When talking about AI, or any major change, big promises about transformation are not enough, especially for companies with reputational baggage.
Brands need to explain what new technologies do for people now and acknowledge the real concerns around them. Otherwise, the message may sound less like a benefit and more like something being imposed on the audience.
How is Anthropic making AI more transparent?
You’ve probably heard about, or maybe even discussed internally, Anthropic’s new watermark feature for Claude.
The company announced it is adding invisible, machine-readable watermarks to Claude-generated text. The move comes as new transparency requirements under the EU AI Act took effect Aug. 2.
Anthropic says the system is designed to survive actions like copying, pasting and light editing, though it also cautions that a detected mark only shows Claude was involved in processing the content, not that Claude created every word or idea.
The company is also stressing its limits. Anthropic says an undetected watermark does not prove something was written entirely by a human, since content can be heavily edited or metadata can be removed.
In a press release on Aug. 14, the company also said: “There’s nothing in the watermark, or its key, that would allow anyone to recover any information about the user, their organization, or their chats with Claude.”
AI disclosure seems to be moving from internal policy discussions to something that may be built into the technology itself. Brands should start deciding what AI use they are comfortable disclosing, how they will explain that disclosure and where human review fits into the process.
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