The Entertainment King

After being founded in 1923, The Walt Disney Company has transformed from a simple production studio that produced cartoon shorts into one of the world’s most successful and diverse entertainment companies. The company’s early successes can be attributed to the creative visions of Walt Disney himself while the company’s most explosive growth was a product of the strategic management of Michael Eisner and his team. During the Eisner years, The Walt Disney Company grew into the Entertainment King that it is today. However, the massive growth and diversification over these years has led to a brand identity crisis that is impacting the company’s performance and ability to meet its strategic goals and objectives.

Walt Disney’s management style focused on achieving creativity and quality while emphasizing teamwork, communication and cooperation in order to maintain the company’s core belief of “creating universal timeless family entertainment.” A big part of the company’s marketing strategy was based upon its cross promotion of products and licensing agreements on merchandise which was created and marketed from successful movies and television shows. As Eisner took over, he recognized that the values instilled by Walt Disney were what made the company unique and he focused on revitalizing these creative areas of the company by fostering an environment where creativity was encouraged and the company’s core values were maintained. By maintaining these core values, the company continued cross promoting its products from individual licenses based on their infamous characters, to the creation of movie inspired attractions at its theme parks. All in all, Eisner created an atmosphere/synergy, similarly to Walt Disney, where the company’s employees interacted with one another and depended on one another constantly.

Walt Disney was always thinking about ways to advance his business as he realized from the very beginning that, “cartoon shorts would not sustain a studio indefinitely.” A big part of Walt Disney’s approach was diversification (theme parks) and vertical/horizontal integration (Buena Vista Distribution) and these concepts, plus many others, were expanded upon exponentially as time progressed. These growth decisions resulted in the creation of Touchstone, Miramax, in-house travel companies, the acquisitions of ABC/ESPN, and expansion of theme parks into many geographical regions in order to satisfy the wants and demands of varying types of consumers. However, these growth opportunities would ultimately threaten the successful brand identity that the company established through Walt Disney’s (and Eisner’s) management philosophies.

Although The Walt Disney Company was successful in reaching a much wider range of consumers in different generations, the company now began to waver from its “traditional family values” persona in order to keep up with its ever evolving consumers. Disney’s consumer preferences and trends have evolved due to changes in technology, culture, and age and today’s younger generations want to separate themselves from the traditional values that was so successful with their parents. The launch of rated R films and the Ellen Show on ABC are excellent examples of how Disney satisfies the wants of certain consumers while leaving other consumers disappointed. This brand identity crisis is the fundamental issue behind the difficulties that Disney is experiencing as a company.

The brand's identity crisis is not limited to the consumer’s external perception of The Walt Disney Company. Internally, the company’s synergy and creativeness, which was so critical to the company’s success, was severely lacking and resulted in a number of key executives leaving the company. The key to Disney’s initial success, its movie/studio, was now producing big budget movies and creativity came in second to the company’s finances. With the lack of successful movies and animations, the marketing principles that proved so successful throughout Disney’s history, such as cross promotion, was now much more difficult to achieve. The Walt Disney Company needed to re-establish its core values based on today’s consumer environment, so that the brand that has proven so successful is maintained.

Part of what made The Walt Disney Company’s brand so successful was their ability to remain effortlessly timeless. They captured the dreams and emotions of decades through classic characters and storylines that have been passed on through generations. Walt Disney was famously quoted saying “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing—that it all started by a mouse”.

Throughout the evolution as a global enterprise; The Walt Disney Company has moved away from their core product offerings and focused on short-term quick fixes to make stakeholders happy. They veered off course in their final delivery to customer markets by incorporating training without adequate follow-up during the brand management campaign in new employee initiation. They effectively began trying to be everything for everyone and ultimately ended up providing little value to their customers.

Synergy within the company and its subsidies can be achieved through improving their marketing management strategies. The Walt Disney Company needs to focus on getting people involved early and often. Everyone in the company must have a voice and be able to reincorporate core values back into the innovation processes. The company needs to think long term about the decisions it makes as a brand when it comes to its products and operations specific to organization. By

positioning each business unit under The Walt Disney Company umbrella, any operations deemed detrimental to the brand can be trimmed and those deemed encouraging will be enhanced to add overall brand value. As such a large international entity, Disney will never be seen without risk; but, in order to maximize their brand recognition, they must control their environment and continue to “get to first base by constantly going to bat and continuing to swing”.

Walt Disney is seen as a man that grew an empire in which he produced a brand that focused on “a product of predictable family style” while being seen as “the father of a family of lovable animals”. The Walt Disney Company will continue to flourish in years to come finding a balance within a culture which seems conflicted with the need to transform while maintaining the importance of remembering its origin from a mouse. By focusing on the core values that gave the brand its foothold in its earliest days, they will be able to accommodate the creative synergy needed for growth in the upcoming generations.

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