Timeless. Walt Disney’s 1957 Corporate Strategy

A marketing masterpiece.

The secrets to success in business, marketing and brand building are embedded in history – you just have to find them.

Here’s one, a 1957 drawing from the Disney archives which beautifully illustrates and graphically articulates in fine detail Disney’s original corporate strategy and vision.

It’s also a marketing treasure for the ages and still hugely relevant today.

For context, today the Walt Disney Company is one of the most iconic and successful brands in the world – generating $69.57 billion in revenue in 2019.  The company is most recognized from its film studio, Walt Disney Studios, and from its 14 different theme parks around the world.

The clues to Disney’s path to sustained growth and dominance over the years can be traced directly to this illustration which was created almost 60-years ago.

As you can see, at the center of the image lies the “creative talent of studios and theatrical films,” its foundational core business pillar surrounded by a diverse portfolio of entertainment assets that are all connected, integrated and supporting one another.

In today’s marketing terminology, it’s a comprehensive and fully integrated omnichannel media and marketing strategy. 

It’s simply brilliant.

The strategic vision of Disney is that each media extension is connected to the whole, with each generating movement and momentum for the entire enterprise.  And it all started with creating original content from the film studio and iterating out from there.

It’s a clever strategy with important lessons that any marketer can apply today.

First and foremost, keep (make) it simple.

While the illustration may look confusing and complex at first glance, it’s actually acting as a map in a cartoon, with precise navigation, and GPS-like instructions inside this town called Disney.  It’s taking what could have been immensely complex and making it easy to comprehend, with a clear and concise direction for every moving part of the business.

Second, think of your marketing as a strategic plan, not one-off fleeting moments in time.  It needs to be cohesive, integrated, connected, and interlocking - splice it, dice it, reuse it, link it, add to it, and go back to it.  It’s your mini version of the Disney strategy.

Whatever the content you create in your marketing - distribute and promote it across multiple channels, on social media, in a blog, podcast, video, email newsletter, etc.

For example, the content that Disney created for its film studios was tied into every other element and moving part in Disney’s media arsenal, (TV shows, commercials, music, books, Walt Disney magazine, comic strips, merchandise licensing and of course the Disneyland theme parks.)

Third, you don’t need to chase shiny new marketing objects and embrace every new platform, media channel, and tactic.  Disney created a few lanes and stayed in them.

They ran the same marketing play over and over to perfection.  If they added something along the way, it became part of the ecosystem – another point of integration and distribution.

Find your signature marketing channels and triple down on them

Last and most importantly, your marketing needs to have a frequency.  You create exponential marketing momentum for your brand when you apply frequency to your “triple down” integrated campaigns. 

Create. Integrate. Distribute. Promote. Repeat.

The hardest part is doing the work, showing up consistently, and having patience.

For the marketing pioneers who are constantly trying to reinvent the wheel and innovate, the real treasures are already out there, buried throughout history.

Slow down, turn back the page, and you just may find them.

“I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.”  Steve Jobs

Until next time ~

Warren