In the business world, advertisers are the stunt performers. Our fragmented media and pop cultural landscape has forced brands to really push stunts into the weird and wonderful. Whether its Snoop threatening to give up smoking, Ben Affleck working a Dunkin drive-thru, or a devil baby terrorizing the streets of New York. Meanwhile in Hollywood, the stunt performers are the ones who actually pull off the death-defying action that can make us gasp. Theyre a breath of IRL fresh air in a world blanketed by visual-effects technology.Now, for the biggest night in entertainment, these two worlds converge for a pretty epic stunt by both worlds definition. Disney Advertising, Jimmy Kimmels Kimmelot, and Ryan Reynoldss Maximum Effort, have enlisted five different brands to create six commercials that will air during the Oscars ceremony, tonight at 4 p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET, featuring more than 75 stunt performers executing classic Hollywood stunts like skydiving, high falls, and dynamic fight scenes.John Campbell, Disney Advertisings senior vice president of entertainment and streaming solutions, says that a lot of their conversations with CMOs have revolved around looking to create quality content that can maximize a given cultural moment, in particular to live audiences. The Oscars ticked all of those boxes.For the participating brandsCarnival Cruise Line, Kiehls, LOral Paris, MNTN, and SamsungCampbell says they saw the advantage of teaming up on a unique concept.We had this concept to shine a light on the stunt community and the tremendous impact that they have on film for all of us as fans, says Campbell. We see them as Hollywoods hidden heroes, so we put the hypothesis out there: What if we invited them to step into the spotlight on entertainments biggest night? And honestly, what came about is kind of wild. We had 75 real-life stunt performers, 150 crew members, and we did this in a little over a week of filming and producing.The result may well be the biggest advertising stunt ever done for the Oscars.Brands playing niceMarketers typically do not like sharing the spotlight. But here, with Carnival Cruise Line, Kiehls, LOral Paris, MNTN, and Samsung, theres a balance among brands across product categories so that they can creatively all row in the same direction.Campbell says that the company has brands it works with on a consistent basis and had a sense of who might want to test the waters of a new concept like this. The question is, are brands really going to play together? So weve had to find the right brands who are going to trust Disney advertisers, going to trust the Academy in order to say, You know what, we are going to play together, and something really special is going to come about.Kiehls general manager John Reed says this is the brands national TV-commercial debut, and it wanted to showcase authenticity, craftsmanship, and innovation. With this being a multibrand project, it was important to us that the Kiehls spot felt endemic to the brand while fitting into the larger storytelling, says Reed. That we can stand out while fitting in.LOreal Paris USA president Laura Branik says this idea was a natural fit to showcase the performance of the brands Infallible 3-Second Setting Mist in a breakthrough way. The collaborative process was really rooted in a shared vision and creativity, says Branik. We worked closely with Disney Advertising from the very startfrom brainstorming concepts to shaping the final execution.We have all been working toward the same goal of elevating stunt performers who are so deserving of this spotlight, which has made the process truly collaborative and fun.The Carnival Cruises ad features stuntwoman Hannah Betts jumping from a helicopter at 11,000 feet right into the pool of a Carnival Cruise ship. The clip in the ad was Betts first take. The Oscars delivers the right audience of prospective Carnival cruisers who love the fun of travel and live events, says Carnival CMO Amy Martin Ziegenfuss. This collaboration provided an opportunity to be more contextually relevant within the program, alongside other great brands and partners.The only nonconsumer brand of the lineup is ad tech firm MNTN, the parent company for Reynoldss creative shop Maximum Effort. CEO Mark Douglas says that the company aims to showcase the power of storytelling during commercial time, and thisstunt aligns perfectly with that mission. Its the ultimate way to show how advertising can be as thrilling and impactful as the content it complements, says Douglas.Stunt Advertising EvolvedIts a novel concept getting five brands to collaborate on a six-ad extravaganza during the Oscars to celebrate stunt performers. But this isnt Disney Advertisings first crack at experimental ads.Back in 2022, it worked with Kimmelot and Maximum Effort for the series finale of The Walking Dead. They created a series of ads for Autodesk, Deloitte, DoorDash, MNTN, and Ring, featuring four characters who died over the course of the shows 11-season run. All five commercials were shot in two days.Last year, the companies collaborated again, this time for a Groundhog Day-like campaign for Lays. That was a series of eight ads starring Stephen Tobolowsky, who played Ned in the 1993 comedy-film classic Groundhog Day, just trying to buy a bag of chips. The spots ran 75 times on the calendars Groundhog Day, taking up a third of ABCs commercial inventory for the day, appearing during Good Morning America, General Hospital, Shark Tank, 20/20, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.Campbell says that the goal was to evolve the approach, this time with multiple brands, and on perhaps the biggest night of live-event TV outside of the Super Bowl. It was really asking, how do we continue to push ourselves, to push the boundaries, and use the full platform of Disney in order to keep pushing these creative boundaries? he says.The StuntsChris Denison directed the Carnival spot and coordinated the stunts and cast every stunt performer across all six commercials. Hes performed stunts in films for Zac Efron, Jared Leto, and Ewan McGregor, as well as being Sam Worthingtons stunt double in James Camerons Avatar sequels.Denison says that his first thought when he heard about this overall idea was, Dude, dont mess this up!All kidding aside, when I first heard of the concept of a series of stunts-centric commercials geared toward paying homage to our profession, I was struck by a tremendous sense of responsibility, both to my peers and the legends of the business who came before us, says Denison. I knew instinctively that if the commercials that we produced were anything less than amazing, they would fall far short of the mission of honoring the overall stunt community. As a result, my team and I poured absolutely everything we had into this process.The biggest challenge from a stunt perspective was using the action to tell a meaningful story inside the boundaries of a 30-second spot.Im a firm believer that action should be a storytelling device; that is, all stunts should be used to drive a story forward, else you risk losing your connection with the audience, says Denison. The creative team and our fantastic directors did us so many favors in this regard, but we as a department had to be absolutely ruthless about distilling the action down to its core.He points to the Samsung Fight commercial. Our first iteration of the fight was over a minute long, says Denison. With the help of our fearless fight coordinator, Steve Brown, we literally workshopped that thing for weeks, stripping out the proverbial shoe leather while highlighting the individual storytelling elements. I believe that the finished product is as compelling as a 30-second fight can get. This challenge persisted across each of the spots, and in every instance we put a hard focus on hyperefficient storytelling through cool action to create what we felt was the best result possible.What stands out to Denison about this advertising stunt is the sheer variety in the spots. From a massive drop off a 12-story office building and a practical skydive out of a helicopter over an ocean to precision-driving in a trophy truck out in the desert.Each spot is wildly different, and yet they all tell a broader story of what kind of content the stunt community is capable of producing, says Denison. It was incredibly fun getting to switch gears so rapidly and complete so many different action sequences in a short amount of time. As under the radar as stunt performers are used to flying, there are individuals within the stunt community whose names are even less well-known, and yet their work is absolutely everywhere on screen.Denison goes on to point out a few of the less-than-famous folks Oscars viewers will see. Whether or not the audience recognizes this, I think its a very fun Easter egg that the boom operator in the Fight commercial is a UFC Hall-of-Famer, the first assistant director in the Kiehls spot is an accomplished supercross racer, and the dude in the floatie in the Carnival Cruise ship pool is Hugh Jackmans stunt double.