Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Disney Marketing Trends
Disney Marketing Trends
Index…………………………………………………………………………………2
Introduction………………………………………………………………………….3
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………11
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..12
3
Introduction:
One of the biggest companies from the entertainment and information industries
is the Walt Disney Company. Commonly known as just Disney, it is a media
conglomerate that comprises a group of tributary companies to the Walt Disney
Company. These companies include television channels such Disney Channel, FX,
National Geographic, ESPN and ABC. They also comprise other movie studio
entertainments such as Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Walt Disney Studios and Blue Sky,
among others. Other tributary companies of the conglomerate include all of Disney’s
theme parks and recently added streaming services such as Hulu or Disney+. With
many theme parks around the world, many business establishments, a world-class
animation studio, and one of the greatest motion picture studios on the planet, Disney
has one of the biggest media brands ever. According to Hoffower, GOBankingRates
estimated the net value of the company as $130billion in 2019. Taking into
consideration the prevalent influence of Disney in America’s —and the whole world’s—
culture, as well as its huge influence on the media market, it is worth asking what is the
key to its remarkable success. After nearly a century from its humble beginnings, the
Disney company has grown to be a super conglomerate thanks to its effective
marketing strategies. The Disney company has been able to effectively identify its target
audience, as well to adapt to the constant changes of the entertainment industry.
Throughout this discussion we will analyze Disney’s current marketing trends and the
strategies that the company has used to adapt to the changing dynamics of the media
market.
would become. Nowadays, the company has been able to branch out and diversify into
different areas other than just animation. Today they have numerous studios, TV
stations, and scholarly properties, including Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm, ABC,
Pixar Animation Studios, and ESPN, fall under Disney.
By 1932, the Disney Company had won its very first Academy Award for Best
Cartoon (the first time that such award was offered) with Silly Symphony, a progression
of vivified short movies. Throughout the following decade, they won the same award
every year. In 1934, Disney began creating their first full-length film, Snow White and
the Seven Dwarves. It was released in 1937 and became the highest-grossing film up to
that time. Nevertheless, the production costs made challenges for Disney's next
animated movies, such as Pinocchio and Fantasia, Dumbo and even Bambi. World War
II stopped the creation of Disney motion pictures as the company helped during the war
by making propaganda videos for the government and training videos for the military.
When World War II ended, the company thought that it would be difficult to get
back on track and regain the market targets that they lost because of the war. However,
in 1950 Disney directed its first live-action movie, Fortune Island, and another film,
Cinderella. Disney also set in motion a few TV arrangements during this decade. In
1950 they held their first Christmas show special, and in 1955 The Mickey Mouse Club
made its presentation to a national TV crowd. That year also had another milestone
minute for Disney: the opening of the principal Disney amusement park, Disneyland in
California, which opened on July 17. It was the first amusement park of its kind, and it
originated the term “theme park.” The company kept on growing in fame and had to
endure the passing of its creator, Walt, in 1966. Following Walt's passing, Roy Disney
took over the supervision of the company and created an executive board in 1971. In
the next decade, the company made the most of delivering highlight films and
developed extra amusement parks, including Disney's first global amusement park,
Tokyo Disneyland in 1983. During this time, the company suffered takeover problems,
however it in the end recouped and got back on its feet when Michael D. Eisner turned
into its director in 1984.
Since the 1980s, Disney has extended its impact over a more extensive market,
starting with the presentation of the Disney Channel on satellite TV. The company built
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up a few subdivisions and studios, for example, Touchstone Pictures, to deliver films
outside its standard family-situated charge and a considerably more extensive balance
in media outlets. Eisner and executive board member Frank Wells ended up being an
effective duo to lead Disney into the new century. In 2005, Bob Iger assumed control
over the CEO job from Eisner. In 2006, Disney acquired Pixar as it concentrated on
advanced animation. Pixar had recently delivered film hits, for example, Toy Story,
Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. Pixar Animation Studios has kept receiving awards
for movies like Moana. When he first became executive in 2009, Iger directed the
company's concentration back to more family-arranged items, as it sold Miramax
Studios and cut back Touchstone Pictures. Roy Disney, the last individual from the
Disney family in the organization, passed away on December 16, 2009. Additionally in
2009, the organization procured Marvel Entertainment, which gave Disney the rights to
many hero establishments, for example, Iron Man and Deadpool. In late 2012, Disney
started its securing of Lucasfilm, which included the rights to the Star Wars franchise.
This newly created branch serves like an adaptation to the rapid changes in the
entertainment industry introduced by the creation of other streaming services. Platforms
like Disney+ and Hulu allow the Disney company to have a share in the streaming
services industry while competing with other mainstream streaming services such as
Netflix (Gupta). In its first day upon release, Disney+ gained over 10 million subscribers.
The key to such success, according to Trainer, seems to be the offering of “quality over
quantity.” In other words, Disney+ offers better content than other streaming services
such as Netflix and allows users to avoid going through the hassle of choosing through
a seemingly endless list of titles. Particularly, a key factor that contributed to the
success of the Disney+ platform was the release of the live-action Star Wars show The
Mandalorian. That same year, 2019, Disney had huge success upon the release of
high-grossing films such as Star Wars: Episode IX, Avengers Endgame and Frozen 2,
which gave Disney a comparative advantage as the streaming service is tied to the
success of those big franchises (Trainer). To put it in a nutshell, Disney+ offers shows
such as The Mandalorian with which audiences are already familiar with because of
other large franchises such as Star Wars. Thus, consumers tend to be attracted more to
those entertainment products that they are already familiar with, awarding Disney+ a
comparative advantage (quality over quantity) over other streaming services that are
filled with too many different options.
The new Parks, Experiences and Consumer Products segment became the
hub of amusement parks and merchandise products in which Disney’s stories,
characters and franchises come to life. Disney’s worldwide consumer products business
is now merged with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Disney’s global consumer products
operations include the world’s leading licensing business across toys, apparel, home
goods, and digital games and apps; the world’s largest children’s publisher; Disney
store locations around the world; and the shopDisney e-commerce platform. By uniting
Disney’s consumer products business and Disney Parks’ robust retail and e-commerce
operations, the Company will be able to share resources and best practices to provide
consumers with incomparable branded products and retail experiences that only Disney
can create.
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advertisement or marketing in any way. Snow White, on the other hand, had flyers on
the streets, sold toys, games, hats and more because by that time, Disney had grew in
size, fame and learned to take effective advantage of the marketing resources at hand.
Nowadays, the advertisement of a movie would be through social media primarily. Now,
with the release of every movie, the Disney company would strategically release action
figures at the Disney stores, open new attractions at their theme parks, release
soundtracks of the film on music platforms, and so on. Which remains relatively similar
to what they did 70 years ago upon the release of movies such as Snow White. There is
a strategic advertisement campaign that would be done months before the release of
the movie to create intrigue and excitement to the audience.
In the last few years, Disney bought Star Wars’ rights, one of their many
acquisitions, to increase the value of the company. Disney created another trilogy to the
Star Wars saga, they also built an entire section on one of their theme parks at
Disneyland California, this theme park encompasses nothing more and nothing less
than 16 acres. A very clever marketing strategy is that a person cannot finish the park in
one day so they would need a two or three-day trip to finish and enjoy each attraction
due to the amount of waiting time that can be up to three hours. On the other side of the
parks, there are all the products that they sell, like hats, mugs, swords, among others.
This is not happening only with Star Wars, but Toy Story is also a target that people
come to the Magic Kingdom at Disney park at Orlando, Florida to visit at least on a 2-
day trip for one park to cover most of the attractions.
Additionally, The Disney Company have had some changes in their distribution
strategies in order to do this, it has paid special attention as they rearrange their
business operations. As mentioned above, the company is going to launch an exclusive
streaming service, a reference can be the app in used in Panama, Cable Onda Go. By
doing this the company is making more interactive, attractive and interesting their
products, to access to it, its needed a monthly paid subscription that creates profit for
the company. Also, making it exclusive for Disney movies and series in welcoming
people of all ages. It is a smart way to market all their products in one place.
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released on 1967. Disney has made two different remakes of it, one live-action in 1994
and another CGI film in 2016. Another is the case of The Sleeping Beauty, originally
released in 1959, which has had two remake spin-offs called Maleficent and Maleficent
2 (Geter). With the use of this strategy, Disney attracts old audiences once again and
invites new ones to explore the stories from old-time classics. Additionally, they also
create expectancy of these remakes. Audiences expect the remakes to have better
animation techniques than the original ones along with more modern directing and
storytelling techniques. Thus, both old and new audiences tend to feel more excited
upon the release of such remakes and want to watch them more.
A final marketing strategy used by Disney is its diversification and cross-brand
collaboration. Disney has prevalently acquired or developed new businesses such as
theme parks, live entertainment, cruise lines, resorts, planned residential communities,
TV broadcasting and retailing by buying or developing the strategic assets it needed
along the way. The Disney company uses diversification as a tool to support its
intensive marketing strategy for business growth. It allows Disney to increase its
competitiveness by simultaneously promoting their business brand and taking
advantage of its brand image to promote other diversified products (Williams). Thus, by
diversification, Disney obtains a greater share in the international market and increases
its brand presence. Moreover, Disney tends to cross-brand with other companies in
collaborations to increase revenues and market presence. For example, their cross-
promotional relationships with McDonald’s and Mattel (Markides).
Conclusion:
Throughout this discussion, we have analyzed one of the biggest media
conglomerates nowadays, The Walt Disney Company. It is a company with a global
market that has diversified into many different branches in order to increase its
corporate value and its comparative competitiveness. It was first an animation study
which later grew enough in size to acquire its first iconic theme park. After that, it has
bought many other iconic franchises and made remakes of its old movies. It mainly
creates family-oriented products that can be enjoyed by people from different cultural
backgrounds and ages. It has arranged its corporate structure in order to properly
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manage all of its revenue sources and has adapted to the uprising prevalence of
internet streaming services. It releases merchandise and heavy advertising as
marketing techniques to promote their movies and increase revenues; and they also
appeal to nostalgy in order to attract old audiences again. As we have seen, Disney’s
marketing techniques have been successful because Walt Disney identified its target
audience from the very beginning of the company, and his legacy remains as Disney
positions as the biggest media corporate of the XI century.
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