Asad Ayaz, the Disney marketing chief behind creative campaigns for Disneyland Resort’s 70th anniversary and films like “Zootopia 2” and the live-action adaptation of “Lilo & Stitch,” has been named chief marketing and brand officer for Walt Disney Co., the entertainment giant said Wednesday.
The 21-year veteran most recently served dual roles as the company’s first chief brand officer as well as president of marketing for Walt Disney Studios.
Ayaz will now lead a new marketing and brand organization within the Burbank media and entertainment company. He reports to Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, as well as the heads of Disney’s film and TV studios, theme parks segment and ESPN for those sectors’ respective marketing efforts.
“As our businesses have evolved, it’s clear that we need a company-wide role that ensures brand consistency and allows consumers today to seamlessly interact with our wonderful products and experiences,” Iger said in a statement Wednesday. “The Chief Marketing and Brand Officer role is critical for this moment, and Asad is the perfect fit.”
In his new role, Ayaz will lead the company’s global marketing efforts, including social and digital strategy, overseeing corporate partnerships and franchise priorities, Disney said.
Ayaz previously worked on brand campaigns commemorating Disney’s 100th anniversary, global expansion of Disney’s D23 fan club and led marketing for Disney+, including shows such as “The Mandalorian,” Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision” and the launch of Taylor Swift’s “The End of an Era” on the streaming platform.
She must have written that story before “Song Sung Blue” came out. Because Hugh Jackman passionately describing the greatness of Neil Diamond’s “Soolaimon” and then demonstrating that song’s grandeur by performing it in the new film “Song Sung Blue” is the definition of corny, feel-good comfort.
Which leads me to my question to you this day: Have you seen “Marty Supreme”? And what feelings — good, bad, uneasy, elated — did that movie arouse in you?
He summited the Sphere, exhorting us to “dream big.” He shot a rap music video to debunk the conspiracy theory that he is a popular British rapper. He has popped up at screenings flanked by bodyguards sporting giant orange ping-pong balls for heads.
Leading up to the Christmas Day premiere of his new movie, “Marty Supreme,” Timothée Chalamet was front and center in a promotional tour that was unhinged, delightful and, judging from the weekend’s box office, quite successful.
“Marty Supreme,” the wildly entertaining, over-caffeinated portrait of a single-minded ping-pong player, took in $27 million over the four-day Christmas weekend, the best opening in distributor A24’s history. The numbers surpassed the opening of “A Complete Unknown,” last year’s Chalamet Christmas release that featured the actor playing Bob Dylan in his formative years.
Not everyone was on board with “Marty.” Moviegoers gave the movie a B+ rating with market research company CinemaScore. That’s good, but not great. (“A Complete Unknown,” by comparison, earned an A.)
Podcaster Claira Curtis’ experience seeing the movie at the Grove feels like an accurate representation of the “Marty Supreme” adventure: “Packed ‘Marty Supreme theater had the full range of reactions. There were people walking out halfway through. There were people clapping. There was someone coming out of it saying, ‘Eh, it was fine’ & then their friend went, ‘Are you insane? It was peak!’”
The disparate responses reflect a couple of things.
One, not everyone embraces the Safdie brand of anxiety-inducing cinema. Josh Safdie directed “Marty.” His brother, Benny, made “The Smashing Machine,” released earlier this year. Together, they made “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time,” movies that, take your pick, were exhilarating or excruciating. Or both! (Exclamation point intended. These are exclamation-point films.)
And two, the title character in “Marty Supreme” is a lot — an undeniably talented, relentless self-promoter careening toward his goals of fame and fortune with little regard to the damage he is inflicting on others. He’s despicable, but also, as played by Chalamet, winningly charming. Unless you find Chalamet annoying. Then you’re probably best-served listening to Hugh Jackman sing Neil Diamond songs.
Chalamet has channeled Marty’s earnest energy in his promotional appearances for the film.
“This is a movie about sacrifice in pursuit of a dream,” he told Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” “And it’s something I can relate to deeply. And we live in a bleak time, especially for young people, so this film is an attempted antidote to that.”
Chalamet then pivoted to the camera, the better to look into viewers’ eyes.
“And to continue to believe in yourself and to continue to dream big and to follow your dreams and not take no for an answer. That’s the spirit of ‘Marty Supreme,’ out on Christmas Day.”
Judging from the box office, Chalamet has pushed across the message. Will it work on awards voters, giving Chalamet the first Oscar of his career? As we head into the new year, the next phase of the “Marty” tour promises to be the season’s most interesting storyline. Gas up the blimp!
As a child, Clara Spars, who grew up in Charles M. Schulz’s adoptive hometown of Santa Rosa, assumed that every city had life-size “Peanuts” statues dotting its streets.
After all, Spars saw the sculptures everywhere she went — in the Santa Rosa Plaza, at Montgomery Village, outside downtown’s Empire Cleaners. When she and her family inevitably left town and didn’t stumble upon Charlie Brown and his motley crew, she was perplexed.
Whatever void she felt then is long gone, since the beagle has become a pop culture darling, adorning all manner of merchandise — from pimple patches to luxury handbags. Spars herself is the proud owner of a Baggu x Peanuts earbuds case and is regularly gifted Snoopy apparel and accessories.
“It’s so funny to see him everywhere because I’m like, ‘Oh, finally!’” Spars said.
The spike in Snoopy products has been especially pronounced this year with the 75th anniversary of “Peanuts,” a.k.a. Snoopy’s 75th birthday. But the grip Snoopy currently has on pop culture and the retail industry runs deeper than anniversary buzz. According to Sony, which last week acquired majority ownership of the “Peanuts” franchise, the IP is worth half a billion dollars.
To be clear, Snoopy has always been popular. Despite his owner being the “Peanuts” strip’s main character and the namesake for most of the franchise’s adaptations, Snoopy was inarguably its breakout star. He was the winner of a 2001 New York Times poll about readers’ favorite “Peanuts” characters, with 35% of the vote.
This year, the Charles M. Schulz Museum celebrated the 75th anniversary of the “Peanuts” comic strip’s debut.
(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)
But the veritable Snoopymania possessing today’s consumers really exploded with the social media boom of the early 2010s, said Melissa Menta, senior vice president of global brand and communications for Peanuts Worldwide.
That’s also when the company saw the first signs of uncharacteristically high brand engagement, Menta said. She largely attributed the success of “Peanuts” on social media to the comic strip’s suitability to visual platforms like Instagram.
“No one reads the comic strips in newspapers anymore,” Menta said, “but if you think about it, a four-panel comic strip, it’s actually an Instagram carousel.”
Then, in 2023, Peanuts Worldwide launched the campaign that made Snoopy truly viral.
That year, the brand partnered with the American Red Cross to create a graphic tee as a gift for blood donors. The shirt, which featured Snoopy’s alter ego Joe Cool and the message “Be Cool. Give Blood,” unexpectedly became internet-famous. In the first week of the collaboration, the Red Cross saw a 40% increase in donation appointments, with 75% of donors under the age of 34.
“People went crazy over it,” Menta said, and journalists started asking her, “Why?”
Her answer? “Snoopy is cute and cool. He’s everything you want to be.”
“Charles Schulz said the only goal he had in all that he created was to make people laugh, and I think he’s still doing that 75 years later,” Schulz Museum director Gina Huntsinger said.
(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)
The Red Cross collaboration was so popular that Peanuts Worldwide brought it back this year, releasing four new shirt designs. Again, the Snoopy fandom — plus some Woodstock enthusiasts — responded, with 250,000 blood donation appointments made nationwide in the month after the collection’s launch.
In addition to the Red Cross partnership, Peanuts Worldwide this year has rolled out collaborations with all kinds of retailers, from luxury brands like Coach and Kith to mass-market powerhouses like Krispy Kreme and Starbucks. Menta said licensed product volume is greater than ever, estimating that the brand currently has more than 1,200 licensees in “almost every territory around the world,” which is approximately four times the number it had 40 years ago.
Then again, at that time, Schulz enjoyed and regularly executed veto power when it came to product proposals, and licensing rules were laid out in what former Times staff writer Carla Lazzareschi called the “Bible.”
“The five-pound, 12-inch-by-18-inch binder given every new licensee establishes accepted poses for each character and painstakingly details their personalities,” Lazzareschi wrote in a 1987 Times story. “Snoopy, for example, is said to be an ‘extrovert beagle with a Walter Mitty complex.’ The guidelines cover even such matters as Snoopy’s grip on a tennis racquet.”
Although licensing has expanded greatly since then, Menta said she and her retail development associates “try hard not to just slap a character onto a T-shirt.” Their goal is to honor Schulz’s storytelling, she added, and with 18,000 “Peanuts” strips in the archive, licensees have plenty of material to pull from.
Rick Vargas, the senior vice president of merchandising and marketing at specialty retailer BoxLunch, said his team regularly returns to the Schulz archives to mine material that could resonate with customers.
“As long as you have a fresh look at what that IP has to offer, there’s always something to find. There’s always a new product to build,” Vargas said.
Indeed, this has been one of BoxLunch’s strongest years in terms of sales of “Peanuts” products, and Snoopy merchandise specifically, the executive said.
BaubleBar co-founder Daniella Yacobovsky said the brand’s “Peanuts” collaboration was one of its most beloved yet.
(BaubleBar)
Daniella Yacobovsky, co-founder of the celebrity-favorite accessory retailer BaubleBar, reported similar high sales for the brand’s recent “Peanuts” collection.
“Especially for people who are consistent BaubleBar fans, every time we introduce new character IP, there is this huge excitement from that fandom that we are bringing their favorite characters to life,” Yacobovsky said.
The bestselling item in the collection, the Peanuts Friends Forever Charm Bracelet, sold out in one day. Plus, customers have reached out with new ideas for products linked to specific “Peanuts” storylines.
More recently, Peanuts Worldwide has focused on marketing to younger costumers in response to unprecedented brand engagement from Gen Z. In November, it launched a collaboration with Starface, whose cult-favorite pimple patches are a staple for teens and young adults. The Snoopy stickers have already sold out on Ulta.com, Starface founder Julie Schott said in an emailed statement, adding that the brand is fielding requests for restocks.
“We know it’s a certified hit when resale on Depop and EBay starts to spike,” Schott said.
The same thing happened in 2023, when a CVS plush of Snoopy in a puffer jacket (possibly the dog’s most internet-famous iteration to date) sold out in-store and started cropping up on EBay — for more than triple the original price.
The culprits were Gen-Zers fawning over how cute cozy Snoopy was, often on social media.
“People who love Snoopy adore Snoopy, whether you grew up with ‘Peanuts’ or connect with Snoopy as a meme and cultural icon today,” said Starface founder Julie Schott.
(Starface World Inc.)
Hannah Guy Casey, senior director of brand and marketing at Peanuts Worldwide, said in 2024, the official Snoopy TikTok account gained 1.1 million followers, and attracted 85.4 million video views and 17.6 million engagements. This year, the account has gained another 1.2 million followers, and racked up 106.5 million video views and 23.2 million engagements.
Guy Casey noted that TikTok is where the brand experiences much of its engagement among Gen Z fans.
Indeed, the platform is a hot spot for fan-created Snoopy content, from memes featuring the puffer jacket to compilations of his most relatable moments. Several Snoopy fan accounts, including one dedicated to a music-loving Snoopy plushie, boast well over half a million followers.
Caryn Iwakiri, a speech and language pathologist at Sunnyvale’s Lakewood Tech EQ Elementary School whose classroom is Snoopy-themed, recently took an impromptu trip to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa after seeing its welcome center decked out with Snoopy decor on TikTok. Once she arrived, she realized the museum was celebrating the “Peanuts” 75th anniversary.
Last year, the Schulz Museum saw its highest-ever attendance, driven in large part by its increased visibility on social media.
(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)
It’s a familiar story for Schulz Museum director Gina Huntsinger.
“Last December, we were packed, and I was at the front talking to people, and I just randomly asked this group, ‘Why are you here?’”
It turned out that the friends had traveled from Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas to meet in Santa Rosa and visit the museum after seeing it on TikTok.
According to Stephanie King, marketing director at the Schulz Museum, the establishment is experiencing its highest-ever admissions since opening in 2002. In the 2024–2025 season, the museum increased its attendance by nearly 45% from the previous year.
Huntsinger said she’s enjoyed watching young visitors experience the museum in new ways.
In the museum’s education room, where visitors typically trace characters from the original Schulz comics or fill out “Peanuts” coloring pages, Gen Z museumgoers are sketching pop culture renditions of Snoopy — Snoopy as rock band Pierce the Veil, Snoopy as pop star Charli XCX.
“When our social media team puts them up [online], there’s these comments among this generation that gets this, and they’re having conversations about it,” Huntsinger said. “It’s dynamic, it’s fun, it’s creative. It makes me feel like there’s hope in the world.”
The Schulz Museum’s “Passport to Peanuts” exhibition emphasizes the comic’s global reach.
(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)
Laurel Roxas felt similarly when they first discovered “Peanuts” as a kid while playing the “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” video game on their PlayStation Portable. For Roxas, who is Filipino, it was Snoopy and not the “Peanuts” children who resonated most.
“Nobody was Asian. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not even in the story,’” they said.
Because Snoopy was so simply drawn, Roxas added, he was easy to project onto. They felt similarly about Hello Kitty; with little identifying features or dialogue of their own, the characters were blank canvases for their own personification.
Roxas visited Snoopy Museum Tokyo with their brother last year. They purchased so much Snoopy merchandise — “everything I could get my hands on” — that they had to buy additional luggage to bring it home.
For some Snoopy enthusiasts, the high volume of Snoopy products borders on oversaturation, threatening to cheapen the spirit of the character.
Growing up, Bella Shingledecker loved the holiday season because it meant that the “Peanuts” animated specials would be back on the air. It was that sense of impermanence, she believes, that made the films special.
Now, when she sees stacks of Snoopy cookie jars or other trend-driven products at big-box stores like T.J. Maxx, it strikes her as a bit sad.
“It just feels very unwanted,” she said. For those who buy such objects, she said she can’t help but wonder, “Will this pass your aesthetic test next year?”
Lina Jeong, for one, isn’t worried that Snoopy’s star will fade.
“[Snoopy is] always able to show what he feels, but it’s never through words, and I think there’s something really poetic in that,” said Lina Jeong.
(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)
Jeong’s affinity for the whimsical beagle was passed down to her from her parents, who furnished their home with commemorative “Peanuts” coffee table books. But she fell in love with Snoopy the first time she saw “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown,” which she rewatches every Valentine’s Day.
This past year, she was fresh out of a relationship when the holiday rolled around and she found herself tearing up during scenes of Snoopy making Valentine’s crafts for his friends.
“Maybe I was hyper-emotional from everything that had happened, but I remember being so struck,” that the special celebrated platonic love over romantic love, Jeong said.
It was a great comfort to her at the time, she said, and she knows many others have felt that same solace from “Peanuts” media — especially from its dear dog.
“Snoopy is such a cultural pillar that I feel like fads can’t just wash it off,” she said.
Soon, she added, she plans to move those “Peanuts” coffee table books into her own apartment in L.A.
