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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.

    Kevin Yee may be e-mailed at [email protected] - Please keep in mind he may not be able to respond to each note personally. FTC-Mandated Disclosure: As of December 2009, bloggers are required by the Federal Trade Commission to disclose payments and freebies. Kevin Yee did not receive any payments, free items, or free services from any of the parties discussed in this article. He pays for his own admission to theme parks and their associated events, unless otherwise explicitly noted..

    © 2009 Kevin Yee


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    Kevin's Disney Books

    Kevin is the author of many books on Disney theme parks, including:

    • Mouse Trap: Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member provides the first authentic glimpse of what it's like to work at Disneyland.
    • The Walt Disney World Menu Book lists restaurants, their menus, and prices for entrees, all in one handy pocket-sized guide.
    • Tokyo Disney Made Easy is a travel guide to Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySeas, written to make the entire trip stress-free for non-speakers of Japanese.
    • Magic Quizdom offers an exhaustive trivia quiz on Disneyland park, with expansive paragraph-length answers that flesh out the fuller story on this place rich with details.
    • 101 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland is a list-oriented book that covers ground left intentionally unexposed in the trivia book, namely the tributes and homages around Disneyland, especially to past rides and attractions.
    • 101 Things You Never Knew About Walt Disney World follows the example of the Disneyland book, detailing tributes and homages in the four Disney World parks.

    More information on the above titles, along with ordering options are at this link. Kevin is currently working on other theme park related books, and expects the next one to be published soon.

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