I'd like to talk about brands. I'm working from a position of interested
outsider on this topic, as I'm a relative novice to marketing and branding,
so I very much look forward to your corrections, thoughts, and
amplifications on email or our MiceChat discussion boards. As always, you
readers know way more than I do (my own learning is part of the reason I
love doing this so much).
Disney has a brand – everyone knows Disney's brand. Or do we? Disney's
mission statement is often said to be (or was at one time) "to make people
happy." Mission statements change, and objectives narrow sometimes, so I
can't find this actual phrase on their public site now (email me if you can
locate it).
But a mission is by definition broad and unspecific. A brand is more
concrete. Many people associate a logo with a brand: that distinctive bottle
shape for Coca-Cola, the Nike swoosh, the Target target, and Mickey Mouse
for Disney. However, a brand is rightly much more than just a logo. One
website defines it as "the essence or promise of what will be delivered or
experienced."
I'll offer my own definition. A brand is:
how people FEEL about you
the sum total of all the customers' associations with this company
a promise
The last point – a promise – is not just an echo of the previous
website's definition, it's also straight out of the mouth of marketing guru
Walter Landor: "Simply put, a brand is a promise. By identifying and
authenticating a product or service it delivers a pledge of satisfaction and
quality."
The first two points kind of go together anyway, and do justice to
Disney's mission. If their goal is that people feel happy, their brand will
make people… feel happy. Some pretty good alignment there.
Splash Mountain –
happiness for many.
Perhaps the measure of success of branding is how well it's entrenched.
Branding is not just advertising; it's causing a change in the way people
feel about your company. Put another way, it's not really "branding" until
the target customer repeats your advertising back at you, as if it were his
own mantra.
Given this last criteria, it's pretty easy to see that Disney succeeds
wildly at its branding. Is there a consistent message about what the Disney
theme parks deliver? Check. Are there folks around the country (and around
the world) who dream of a Disney parks vacation, believing it to be "where
the magic lives"? Check.
You don't have to look much further than a Disney
fan message board to find folks who live, breathe, and adore Disney, and
will not brook any argument that Disney is anything other than fully
magical. Some of these folks will repeat the Disney advertising in message
board posts with no hint of sarcasm or irony… the surest sign of all that
branding is working. Disney parks are known for quality family
entertainment, and probably rightly so. Even their critics will point this
out.
DisneyQuest – does it
match the needs of all of Disney's audience?
Good marketing takes the brand and applies it to the marketplace. Here is
an overly-reductive view of the most important principles in marketing:
Know Yourself
Know Your Audience
You Are Not Your Audience
The first item in this list is not actually the most important (that
would be #2), but it makes sense to address it first because it's how we
narcissistic beings operate, by thinking of ourselves first. A smart company
will perform a SWOT analysis (internally-focused Strengths and Weaknesses,
and outward forces that are Opportunities and Threats). This will tell them
what they are good at. An ideal alignment comes out of recognizing a
strength and lining it up with an opportunity, for instance.
Knowing the audience is the most crucial element. If you know your
audience, you can create products and services that they will want to buy.
Sounds intuitive, and it sometimes is, but companies spend millions of
dollars to find out who their audiences are and what they want. Disney is
famous (infamous?) for its focus on such metrics.
Principle #3 reminds us that a company should not lull itself into
thinking that "it knows" what its customers want. If the people want
transformer widgets, it will do little good to insist that the people really
want high school musical widgets instead, and attempt to insistently
"remind" them of that via nonstop advertising.
Here, too, it would appear that Disney knows what it is doing. Like the
brand, the marketing is understood down to a science, and the core audience
seems to keep coming back. Surely Disney is not suffering in this economy
that way that investment banks or auto companies are, a clear sign that
the Mouse is hitting its audience.
But at this point, we could reasonably ask just what is meant by the
"core audience." Is it families traveling from afar? Locals with annual
passes? Honeymooners? Multi-generational families celebrating a young girl's Quinceañera? Or all of the above? (Is it even allowed to be "all of the
above"? wouldn't you have to choose one?)
For whom is the Magic
Kingdom built?
MiceAge alone is ample evidence that not every fan of Disney marches in
lockstep with the brand, the marketing, and the company practices. Yours
truly was not enamored with the "Year of a Million Dreams," for instance,
and I still think the parade names at the Magic Kingdom are five shades of
bland. It's the honest truth that every time I need to mention one by name,
I have to look up exactly what it was called. They all seem to be some
variation of "Dream a Wish Come True" (I'm only exaggerating a little).
Let's look again at the aforementioned Nike swoosh. The logo doesn't
really "establish" the brand so much as just help the customer
clarify how he feels about the brand. Some people look at the Nike swoosh
and see athleticism, while others conjure up sweatshops. The question is not
so much one of spreading awareness of the brand. Rather, it's a fundamental
question of determining whether people SWITCH how they feel about the brand.
It would be hard to argue with the policies of a company, no matter one's
personal beliefs, if the branding and marketing resulted in ever-more people
coming "on board" with the vision and buying into the hoped-for brand
awareness. Is that the case with today's Walt Disney Company? Is the theme
park brand one of ever-increasing converts?
It might be equally easy to argue that there are ever-increasing
disillusioned fans. What's the opposite of converts… former converts? Ex-verts?
Those same Disney message boards show equal parts Disney fanatics (foamers,
so named because they metaphorically foam at the mouth for any official
Disney offering, no matter the quality--or lack thereof) and exverts, those
now feeling Disney isn't quite the quality entertainment (or perhaps the
price-worthy bargain) it once was. Just about any topic on the Disney
message boards will show this divisiveness. Labels fly in such an
environment: "apologists" are those who excuse Disney practices, even if
they fleece the customer. Those with criticisms are seen as negativists and
incorrigible pessimists.
Living With the Land:
does it still convert non-believers?
The real question to my mind is how many people are converting versus how
many are "exverting" (if you'll allow the creation of a non-term). If the
net balance is toward conversion – buying into the Disney brand when
previously they didn't like it – then Disney is clearly doing something
right. If the net sum comes down on the other side – exverting away from the
Disney surface message and finding it shallow rather than attractive – then
Disney has an image problem on its hands. And not a trivial one. If more
people are moving away from Disney than toward it, that means they have a
declining audience and soon enough the product will be a declining asset. No
one wants to see that happen.
I tried an experiment before writing this article. I posted a question to
my Facebook friends (many of you readers are in that category) inviting them
to address the branding question before I even wrote my first word. Here's
what I wrote: "I will tell you now, ahead of time, what I want to write in
my MiceAge article this week, and you can feed me ideas, concerns,
suggestions, etc before I write it (which will happen tonight). My topic:
branding, brand identity, and marketing to Disney's multiple (heterogeneous)
audiences, and a scorecard on how Disney is doing."
I expected responses about the emotional reaction to Disney, but almost
everyone who replied reacted instead to the Disney logos and to
merchandising. Jason wrote "The Disney Parks logo being used everywhere
seems like a cheap way to distribute merch to all the parks in FL and CA,
and the availability of niche items specific to a park or land has all but
disappeared," and several others echoed Jason's dismay. Shelly proclaimed
her willingness to spend, but wouldn't do it with the blandness now in the
stores. Lisa declared that "I miss the park and land specific merchandise
from years past. I also miss items that were exclusive to the Disney store."
The responses expressed annoyance about homogeneity, staleness, too much
of one type of merchandise (Princesses or High School Musical), and not
enough unique/exclusive items (too many, it seems, are identical to
what's offered at Wal-Mart and Target).
How to explain this disconnect with the clear profits Disney makes at its
parks? I think this is further evidence of the different (and differing!)
audiences that frequent Disney parks. If the merchandise makes money, it
can't reasonably be argued that bland merchandise is worthless. But the
reverse is also true. If the bland merchandise annoys the regulars (which
many of you readers are), then Disney is not meeting YOUR needs.
I had hoped that the D23 official fan club might bridge the gap, and be
more expressly aimed at the frequent Disney fanatic, the foamer, and even
the ever-hopeful critics like me. I still think D23 can fit that gap and
fill that niche… they just need to work to bring their price points back to
reality along with the frequency of theirofferings.
What struck me most about my unscientific Facebook quiz was the
transactional nature of the responses. Clearly, you readers want to spend
money on Disney products, and you feel stymied that Disney isn't offering
you what you want. I can't help but think other companies must be envious.
Here are some of the company's most dedicated fans, earnest pining away for
a chance to spend money on their passion.
.
Theme park collectibles
– some from each coast.
The bad news, though, is that many of them lament the inability to find
what they want. This is reflected not only in the merchandise opportunities,
but also in the overall parks experience. It's not uncommon to find people
who were formerly converts to Disney now declaring themselves exverts (in
not so many words). If they start to feel Disney has declined enough, they
may just stop coming and stop posting on those message boards, having moved
on to other things in their life.
And that, my friends, brings us back to the definition of a brand. How
does the Disney brand make you "feel"? Well, the opposite of love is not
hatred. It's indifference. And something I would be hyper-sensitive toward,
if I were in Disney's shoes.
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