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Disney Is Making a Fortune and Safeguarding Its Future By Buying Childhood (economist.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the running-things-into-the-ground-for-fun-and-profit dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Disney has been successful for the better part of a century. But they haven't always had to work as hard to do it. Over the past couple of decades, they've been facing more and better competition than ever before, and they've had to change their business strategy in response. An article at The Economist details this strategy, which seems to have a central theme: buy up things people loved as kids, and commercialize the hell out of them. The recent Star Wars film is the latest example — the marketing blitz around it (and its related merchandise) was a sight to behold. Disney is hoping that focusing investment on great content will protect them from the massive transitions underway in the content delivery part of the entertainment industry. "The biggest doubt is the durability of the model. It is not clear for how long such franchises can be stretched. And introducing new ones is a risk. John Carter, a film based on one of a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, flopped. Cinema-goers will also have far more choice as other firms try to establish or add to their franchises."

6 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. star wars has marketing? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    crazy back in the 80's it was as pure as the virgin mary. no tie in toys by Hasbro or Kenner. No tie in fast food. no lines to see ROTJ because of full page ads in the newspaper. George Lucas made the movies out of pure love of his fans

    1. Re:star wars has marketing? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1, Informative

      yes i was and i remember all the marketing crap around then and all the toys. Lucas created the modern blockbuster and the marketing and product tie ins around it. i was in 4th grade when ROTJ came out and it was the same as it is today. toys, junk food and all other kinds of branded products

    2. Re:star wars has marketing? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Informative

      The post was this new thing called "sarcasm". It was just invented last week which is why you've probably not heard of it yet.

    3. Re:star wars has marketing? by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 1, Informative

      He was modded up because he deserved positive points...but there's no "+1 Epic Sarcasm" option.

  2. Re:This is nothing new by Schnapple · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's Oswald the Rabbit, not Oscar.

    Also, kinda interesting story, Oswald was the antagonist of the game Epic Mickey. On the Idle Thumbs podcast, Sean Vanaman told the story about how he and some others were handed the Epic Mickey project because no one at Disney Interactive Studios knew what to do with Mickey. They came up with the idea to have Oswald be in the game but Disney didn't own it, NBC Universal did. They pitched it to Bob Iger who liked the idea so much that he put the wheels in motion to trade Al Michaels from Disney-owned ESPN to NBC (something Michaels had wanted to do) in exchange for Oswald and a few other things.

    Vanaman tells the story that he had no idea any of this was going on until he read in the sports section "AL MICHAELS TRADED FOR CARTOON RABBIT"

    --

    Schnapple

  3. Re:Agreed, but try telling kids this by fropenn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Getting you to believe that you are completely unaffected by advertising is a key goal of advertisers. Beware.