It was Walt Disney who once said that “when you believe in a thing, believe in it all the

way, implicitly and unquestionable.”

Walt Disney was an American motion picture and television producer and showman, fa-
mous as a pioneer of cartoon films, including Mickey Mouse, and as the creator of the
amusement parks Disneyland and Disney World. Disney was an innovative animator and
created the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. He won 22 Academy Awards during his life-
time, and was the founder of theme parks Disneyland and Walt Disney World. In 1919,
Disney moved to Kansas City to pursue a career as a newspaper artist. His brother Roy
got him a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where he met several cartoonists of that
time.
From there, Disney worked at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where he made com-
mercials based on cutout animation.
Around this time, Disney began experimenting with a camera, doing hand-drawn cel ani-
mation. He decided to open his own animation business.
Disney and his brother Roy moved to Hollywood in 1923, and there they began the Disney
Brothers' Cartoon Studio.

What is Disney ?

The Walt Disney Company is a diversified international family entertainment and media
enterprise. The California-based company’s businesses include media networks, studio
entertainment, interactive media, consumer products, theme parks and resorts.Throughout
its near century-long history, Disney has grown into a multi-billion-dollar business, famous
for its flagship family-oriented brands. Disney has also acquired several companies to
reach wider audiences. The list includes 21st Century Fox, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm,
Pixar and Blue Sky Studios.
As of July 2022, the company operates two main business segments: Disney Media and
Entertainment Distribution (DMED), and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products (DPEP).
DMED covers global film and episodic television content production and distribution activi-
ties. The content is distributed by a single organisation across three significant lines of
business: Linear Networks, Direct-to-Consumer and Content Sales/Licensing. Studios,
General Entertainment and Sports create the content.
DPEP’s operations has two main business lines: Parks & Experiences and Consumer
Products. Park & Experiences operates all Disney’s resorts, hotels, Disneyland parks, a
four-ship vacation Disneyland Cruise Line, and other entertainment facilities.
Consumer Products’ operations consist of licensing and retail. The former provides li-
cences on a diverse range of product categories, including toys, apparel, games, acces-
sories, and footwear. It also licenses characters from its film, television and other proper-
ties for use on third-party products and earns royalties.
Some of the major properties licensed by the company include: Mickey and Minnie Mouse,
Star Wars, Frozen, Disney Princess, Avengers, Spider-Man, Toy Story, Disney Classics,
Winnie the Pooh and Cars. On the retail operation, the company sells Disney, Marvel,
Pixar and Lucasfilm-branded products through retail stores and internet sites globally.
For nearly a century, The Walt Disney Company has created entertainment of the very
highest quality. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the early 1920s to the
Company of today—which includes Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Searchlight Pictures, and
20th Century Studios, along with Disney Parks and Resorts around the globe—Disney
continues to provide timeless entertainment for the entire family.

Disney History
Walt Disney arrived in California in the summer of 1923 with a lot of hopes but little else.
He had made a cartoon in Kansas City about a little girl in a cartoon world, called Alice’s
Wonderland, and he decided that he could use it as his “pilot” film to sell a series of these
“Alice Comedies” to a distributor. Soon after arriving in California, he was successful. A
distributor in New York, M. J. Winkler, contracted to distribute the Alice Comedies on Octo-
ber 16, 1923, and this date became the start of the Disney company. Originally known as
the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, with Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, as equal part-
ners, the company soon changed its name, at Roy’s suggestion, to the Walt Disney Stu-
dio.
Walt Disney made his Alice Comedies for four years, but in 1927, he decided to move in-
stead to an all-cartoon series. To star in this new series, he created a character named
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Within a year, Walt made 26 of these Oswald cartoons, but
when he tried to get some additional money from his distributor for a second year of the
cartoons, he found out that the distributor had gone behind his back and signed up almost
all of his animators, hoping to make the Oswald cartoons in his own studio for less money
without Walt Disney. On rereading his contract, Walt realized that he did not own the rights
to Oswald—the distributor did. It was a painful lesson for the young cartoon producer to
learn. From then on, he saw to it that he owned everything that he made.
While the cartoons were gaining popularity in movie houses, the Disney staff found that
merchandising the characters was an additional source of revenue. A man in New York of-
fered Walt $300 for the license to put Mickey Mouse on some pencil tablets he was manu-
facturing. That was the start of Disney merchandising. Soon there were Mickey Mouse
dolls, dishes, toothbrushes, radios, figurines—almost everything you could think of bore
Mickey’s likeness. The year 1930 was a big one for the mouse that started it all, as it saw
the first Mickey Mouse book and newspaper comic strip published.
One night in 1934, Walt informed his animators that they were going to make an animated
feature film, and then he told them the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. There
were some skeptics in the group, but before long everyone had caught Walt’s enthusiasm,
and work began in earnest. It took three years, but the landmark film debuted on Decem-
ber 21, 1937 and became a spectacular hit.

Work immediately began on other feature projects, but just as things were looking rosy,
along came World War II. The next two features, Pinocchio was released in 1940. This
weas technical masterpieces, but their costs were too high for a company losing most of
its foreign markets because of the war. Dumbo was made in 1941 on a very limited bud-
get, but Bambi, in 1942, was another expensive film, and caused the studio to retrench. It
would be many years before animated features of the highest caliber could be put into pro-
duction.

During the war, Walt made two films in South America, Saludos Amigos and The Three
Caballeros, at the request of the State Department. His studio concentrated on making
propaganda and training films for the military. When the war ended, it was difficult for the
Disney Studio to regain its pre-war footing.

Walt was never satisfied with what he had already accomplished. As his motion pictures
and television programs became successful, he felt a desire to branch out. One area that
intrigued him was amusement parks. This was the genesis of Disneyland. After several
years of planning and construction, the park opened on July 17, 1955.
After the success of Disneyland, it was only natural for Walt to consider another park on
the East Coast. It opened October 1, 1971.
The new management team after the main original chiefs immediately saw ways for Dis-
ney to maximize its assets. The Company had left network television in 1983 to prepare for
the launch of a cable network, The Disney Channel. While the pay-TV service was suc-
cessful, Eisner and Wells felt Disney should have a strong network presence as well, so in
1985 Disney’s Touchstone division began the immensely successful Golden Girls, fol-
lowed in 1986 by a return to Sunday night television with the Disney Sunday
Movie (later The Magical World of Disney and The Wonderful World of Disney). Films from
the Disney library were selected for the syndication market, and some of the classic ani-
mated films were released on video cassette. Using the sell-through technique, Disney
classics soon reached the top of the all-time best-seller lists.
Disney animation began reaching even greater audiences, with The Little Mermaid being
topped by Beauty and the Beast in 1991 which was in turn topped by Aladdin in 1992. Hol-
lywood Records was formed to offer a wide selection of recordings ranging from rap to
movie soundtracks.
For the first time in 1991, Disney moved into publishing, forming Hyperion Books, Hyperion
Books for Children, and Disney Press, which released books on Disney and non-Disney
subjects. Disney purchased Discover magazine, the leading consumer science monthly.
As a totally new venture, Disney was awarded in 1993 the franchise for a National Hockey
League team, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.

In 2006 High School Musical aired on Disney Channel and become an overnight sensa-
tion. In May, Disney made a major purchase of Pixar Animation Studios. Dis-
ney•Pixar’s Cars was released in June. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest beat
Company records to become the company’s highest grossing feature after its July release.

The Secret of Disney’s Brand

Since its creation in 1923, the Walt Disney Company has continued to capture the atten-
tion of consumers around the globe. The company attracts people of all ages, reaching a
broad audience through various media and entertainment outlets.
Disney’s power lies in its brand. With a market capitalization hovering near $200 billion,
the Disney brand is constantly expanding and growing.

How has Disney created such a powerful brand? And how can we learn from the com-
pany’s marketing strategy?

Create the Story

For Disney, storytelling is key. Storytelling requires an emotional component that will ap-
peal to consumers of all ages, and Disney has mastered the ability to create those emo -
tions. Every advertisement, commercial, and billboard must remind consumers of those
emotions and stories.
A former executive at Disney put it:
“We’ve all known the power of attracting emotions through strong storytelling, and that’s
what makes Disney so unique. At Disney, it’s about the power of narrative and being able
to create a world with a theme and characters, to draw emotions that are common to all
people around the world.”

But how does Disney manage to separate itself from its competitors?

The answer lies in a unique content marketing strategy. Disney has a one-two approach
by first creating the story and then building a whole line of products around that story.
As an article from Forbes states, “Disney’s ‘content marketing’ strategy goes in reverse
compared to most brands. Meaning, where most brands start with a physical product and
then build a story around it in the form of ‘content marketing,’ companies like Disney do ex-
actly the opposite.”
This is how Disney has separated itself from its peers. By adopting such a simple strategy,
the company has differentiated itself in a saturated market.

Know the Audience

In addition to the stories that they masterfully wield as part of the company’s branding, Dis-
ney has become successful by appealing to the audience’s wishes.
For much of Disney’s audience, nostalgia remains a driving force behind annual revenue.
Consumers who experienced the power of Disney in their childhood want to be reminded
of those feelings. They don’t want a new Disney; they want the Disney that the grew up
loving as a child.
1)For the 1983 park opening in Tokyo, the food and beverage team picked Japanese sta-
ples they thought would appeal to park-goers: rice, fish, and other items that required
chopsticks. But after slow sales, the team realized it was the exact opposite: The Japa-
nese didn’t come to the Happiest Place on Earth for what they could get at a local sushi
shop. They sought the ultimate American experience. They wanted hot dogs, French fries,
greasy finger foods, and sugary soda. They wanted sticky hands and food comas.”
2)Disney wanted to avoid making the same mistake again. When the company opened
Disneyland Paris in 1992, only American food was offered at the park. But the French, un-
like the Japanese, had “no interest in partaking of the ‘American experience.’ So they
stepped out of the park to eat more traditional French dishes (perhaps with a glass of
wine), then returned to jump on the rides.”
After realizing this, Disney quickly added Parisian options to the restaurants at the park.
This encouraged visitors to dine at the park, adding to the all-day family appeal of Disney-
land Paris.
The lesson here is to know your audience. Disney constantly analyzes how consumers re-
act to different movies, shows, theme parks, and any other form of entertainment. By
knowing its audience, the company has been able to meet the needs and wishes of a
growing fan base.

Effective structure
Disney’s organizational structure is huge, but it works because it has been designed and is
managed in a way that makes the company very effective at supporting the company’s
many business divisions, segments, brands, and operations across the global market as it
continues to purchase or partner with other major companies and diversify its audience.
Disney’s core leadership team manages the world’s biggest media company and is re-
sponsible for some of the world’s most beloved brands. Their strategic direction for The
Walt Disney Company is focused on generating the best content possible while fostering
innovation in a sort-of autocratic, top-down environment.