Case Study : Branding : Walt Disney Company
- zigszagsandpr
- Jul 25, 2017
- 6 min read
So I've been shit frankly at updating the last few weeks. I'd like to blame it on the fact that I actually have a full time proper marketing intern job and I'm working extremely hard but actually I've just wasted too many evenings watching Love Island and eating custard cremes. Under the pretence that I'm working hard I'm going to keep relaxed about updating until September but from then will be (hopefully) updating a min. of a post a month!
According to American business magazine 'Forbes' Walt Disney is currently the 8th leading brand worldwide, with a market cap of $169.3 Billion (as of May 2016) and 185,000 employees. The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923 and has been growing ever since, now developed into a family entertainment and media enterprise. The brand is heavily based around the characters, specifically Mickey Mouse who was created in 1928. The Disney image is heavily family based, focused on being happy and magic. Mickey Mouse was the perfect character to start this all off. By 1955 the Disney brand had developed away from just cartoons to their first theme park to initiate real life experiences and physical interaction with their consumers. As the years have gone on more media opportunities have arisen such as music, live television, and developed animations. According to Brand Finance, “Disney’s strength is founded on its rich history and original creations, however its now dominant position is the result of its many acquisitions and the powerful brands it has brought under its control. ESPN, Pixar, The Muppets and Marvel are all now Disney-owned, but perhaps its most important acquisition of all has been Lucasfilm, and thus Star Wars.”
One of the reasons Disney is so successful is that it still maintains the same brand ethos that it did back in 1923. The Walt Disney Company understands the idea of building an authentic relationship between themselves and the consumer. This can be seen in how all visitors at the parks are called guests since Walt was adamant in treating paying customers like 'guests in our own home'. This connection builds the brand loyalty that Disney so firmly has, it costs a lot less to keep a current consumer than to bring in a new one. Disney's theme is so influential in their parks. If you took away the 'Disney' from the park it would just be an average theme park with average rollercoasters, average food and an average atmosphere. The amount that Disney put into their theme, such as pumping out scents for different rides, hiding the 'offstage' areas and having characters roaming the park builds on the idea of magic that they're so concrete on. The Snow White signature from 10 years ago in Disneyland should be identical to a current signature in Disneyworld. They apply this theme to everything which is what their brand is built on. Disney Channel is fairly different to the Disney Princesses but it still emphasises the idea of magic and being a child. This can be seen in the use of the wands in the ad breaks where actors say who they are, what they're from and "you're watching Disney Channel". This magical persona is immersed into everything Disney from the architecture of the high street stores to the branding of ESPN. Disneys 'Walk of Magic Memories' ended in February 2011, but essentially entailed consumers paying $150 to have their names put onto a brick in the Disney walkway. The brick remained the property of Disney and was liable to be pulled out at anytime. Only a brand as strong as Disney would be able to sell several hundreds of these bricks and that was due to the strong sense of brand loyalty.
CSR reports are a form of regulation focusing on the economic, social and environmental benefits of a company. In 2016 Forbes placed Walt Disney as the third best brand in CRS which they've held since 2014 behind Google and Microsoft. In 2013 they came joint first with a rating of 72/100 and received the citizen award for their role in environmental care and support of good causes. Disney are known for their promotion of environmentally friendly, seen in moral teaching in their children's programmes and also in their own methods. In 2015 they reduced their emissions by 34% and hope to up that to 50% by 2020. Again wastage was reduced by 49% and the aim is 60% by 2020. They're also known for their philanthropy. 2015 brought them giving $333.3 million to nonprofit organisations such as UNCF to help children and have donated 23.1 million books to schools since 2012. This suggests that their viewed positively as a business in itself.
Typically, The Walt Disney Company’s prime audience are children. Now that they own Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, they own a huge amount more of characters and control a huge amount of the Hollywood franchise. This branches slightly more to a young male demographic, away from the initial thought of princesses in a castle that as a generality is more agreeable for young girls. However children are not the ones paying for anything which means the parents must also be on board. This reflects Disney’s targeting of families as a whole and providing something for everyone in the family from Mickey Mouse’s Clubhouse for younger audiences to Disney Channel for a teen audience to channels such as Freeform (previously ABC Family) for a more adult audience.. This can be seen in their advertising, the emphasis on letting ‘the memories begin’ for their themepark suggests they’re targeting a parent audience who want good memories with their children. Walt Disney was quoted to have said “You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.” and “[Disney is] not for children but the child in us.” suggesting again that their audience is for the whole family. Since Disney has been around for many years everyone aged 93 and younger would have had Disney films and cartoons being realised as they grew up. This means that many of the older generation have positive memories of whatever Disney was producing when they were young. Even though some of these films came out up to 70/80 years before the current child audience were alive many of these children have seen the old classics such as Robin Hood, Snow White and 101 Dalmations. In September 2016 youtube channel REACT ran a video to see if 10 kids could name the film and song of Disney films from the 30s-60s. The comments section was full of people stating their ages (mostly under age 20) discussing how they knew most of, or all of, the songs and the films even though the children on the video struggled with films such as Pinocchio and Peter Pan. This suggests that the brand has a huge and loyal following who pass this on the next generation.
However, like all companies Disney have received their criticism. The media recently has seen a growth in more diverse characters. Strong females, non-whites, LGBT+ characters are mattering more in plotlines than the standard white cis-man. Although many people disagree with the over politicisation, Disney have been criticised by a wide audience for their characters. Although the Disney Princess franchise is huge, the princesses tend to be white, slim, and in need of a man to save them such as Sleeping Beauty or their entire lives revolving around a male such as The Little Mermaid. It is only in more recent films that this has started to change and even Princess Tiana (a black princess) is still not actually a princess and sisters Elsa and Anna pick love for their sisters over anything but still the storyline relies on Anna's love for a man. This suggests that Disney have the opportunity to expand their audience by creating characters more diverse and relating with a wider audience. Their criticism about whitewashing could also be stopped if they embraced it, the film Pan featured white actress Rooney Mara cast as Tiger Lily, a American Indian character which received a small amount of backlash. However they’ve stated that in the upcoming Action version of Mulan the cast will all be Chinese and authentic to their characters. This suggests that they’re taking this opportunity to rebrand themselves as more diverse and relate to a bigger demographic.
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