My Real Thing - Case Study: Disney

Dear Readers,

This written half of my exam is split into two sections: (From the Specification).

"G322: Key Media Concepts (TV Drama)

This paper covers the two areas of Textual Analysis and Representation alongside Institutions and Audiences. In Section A, candidates answer questions on an unseen moving image extract that is then linked to some aspect of the representation within the sequence. In Section B, candidates study a specific media industry from a choice of: film, music, newspapers, radio, magazines or video games. This unit is externally examined."

This blog is focusing on Section B - where we compare two media industries in film and contrast their differences/ similarities. However the difference between the companies is that one is a big expensive funded company such as DISNEY and one is a small British film company VERTIGO.

I'm focusing on DISNEY as I'm using this big company to compare it to my smaller company.
However what is DISNEY about???

Here are 19 interesting facts about the thriving business Walt Disney built:

1. In 1929, The Walt Disney Company marked the beginning of its merchandising business by licensing a children's writing tablet bearing the image of Mickey Mouse.

2. In fiscal year 2014, consumer products generated revenue and operating income of nearly $4 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively, for the House of Mouse.

3. When mulling names for his first theme park, Walt Disney even considered "Mickey Mouse Village" before settling on Disneyland.

4. Disneyland could have just as easily been called the "Snow White Village." Disney took a massive risk producing the world's first feature-length animated movie in 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which required a then-enormous $1.499 million production budget. Industry sceptics called the project "Disney's Folly" before it even hit theatres.

5. Snow White turned out to be a huge commercial success, grossing over $66 million during its 1937 theatrical run before reaching $185 million with the help of rereleases in 1983, 1987, and 1993. Today, Snow White's inflation-adjusted box office total of $885 million ranks it as the 10th highest-grossing domestic movie of all time.
6. After completing Disneyland in 1955, Disney almost opened a ski resort. The site would have been near California's Sequoia National Park, was meant to accommodate as many as 20,000 skiers, and progressed so far that Disney even acquired Forest Service approval and a roads deal with the Governor of California. After Walt Disney's death in 1966, however, the company chose to instead focus on completing its ambitious Walt Disney World project, which opened in 1971.

7. Walt Disney World is still by far the company's largest resort, occupying 25,000 acres of company-owned land. That includes four theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom), 800 campsites on Disney's Fort Wilderness camping and recreational area, and 18 resort hotels with a total of approximately 23,000 rooms, 3,000 vacation club units, and 468,000 square feet of conference meeting space.

8. With the exceptions of 1976, 1977, and 1988, Disney has increased Magic Kingdom daily admission prices every year since it opened. Note those exceptions immediately followed the stock market crashes of 1973-1974 -- which left the U.S. in recession until mid-1975 -- and late-1987.

9. Walt Disney Studios exceeded $4 billion in calendar year box office receipts for the first time in company history on Nov. 25, 2013, thanks primarily to the $1.215 billion contribution from Iron Man 3, and $744 million from Monster's University.
10. This year, Disney reached the same milestone nine days earlier, helped by grosses of well over $700 million each from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Maleficent, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

11. Disney's first film to exceed $1 billion in global box office receipts was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which reached $1.066 billion in 2006. Since then, five more Disney films have eclipsed the 10-figure mark including 2010's Alice in Wonderland ($1.026 billion) and Toy Story 3 ($1.063 billion), 2011's Pirate of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($1.046 billion), 2012's Marvel's The Avengers ($1.519 billion), and 2013's Iron Man 3 ($1.215 billion) and Frozen ($1.274 billion).

12. Note half of those $1billion-plus films stemmed from Disney's decisions to acquire Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006 ($6.3 billion net of Pixar's cash), and Marvel for $4 billion in 2009.

13. To date, the 16 post-acquisition movies from Pixar and Marvel have collectively generated estimated gross profit for Disney of nearly $3.4 billion.

14. Disney hopes to duplicate that early success with its $4 billion 2012 acquisition of Star Wars and Indiana Jones creator Lucasfilm.

15. Several industry analysts have already predicted the late-2015 launch of the first film stemming from that purchase, Star Wars: Episode VII, could gross more than $2 billion worldwide.

16. As it stands, Disney's largest and most profitable segment is Media Networks, which generated fiscal year 2014 revenue of $21.2 billion, and operating income of $7.3 billion.
17. Disney's media networks not only include the Disney Channels, but also ABC Family, an 80% stake in ESPN, and 50% stakes in A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime Movie Network, The Biography Channel, H2, and three Lifetime channels.

18. The August 2013 launch of the Disney Infinity game franchise almost single-handedly turned around Disney's languishing Interactive gaming business, driving the segment to a $116 million operating profit in year 2014. Previously in year 2012 and fiscal year 2013, Disney Interactive had posted operating losses of $87 million and $216 million, respectively.

19. Disney aims to consistently return around 20% of all cash generated by the company to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases.

About Star Wars: A way in which Disney globally dominates the market is through its ability to market the movie through many of its film companies. The newly released Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has been marketed since October 2012 when Disney bought “Lucasfilms” for $4billion, generating interest in this movie for over 3 years. This allows them to have both ownership of vertical and horizontal integration, which save them money, as they don’t need to outside companies to help produce a movie. Plus Disney hasn’t just bought Lucasfilms but the world known “Marvel” for $4billion and well-known company Pixar for $7.4billion all contributing to the 971 movies Disney has made. Its Lucasfilms, the company producing the Star Wars movie I studied, so how does it promote globally to consumers? Well in November 2014 it released a 90-second teaser trailer to promote The Force Awakens by screening it in selected cinemas across the United States and Canada and then in theaters worldwide in December 2014. It was also released on YouTube and in the iTunes Store generating a record 58.2million views on YouTube in its first week. This trailer was a non-verbal communication to the world that reinstated their loyalty to star wars, therefore resulting in $2billion worth of merchandise being sold in 2013/2014. However, this global empire doesn’t stop at film companies.

Another way in which Disney sells its services globally is through other platforms, such as it’s largest platform being ‘media networks’ to which its doesn’t just own Disney Channels, but also ABC Family, has an 80% stake in ESPN, and a 50% stake in A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime Movie Network, The Biography Channel, H2, and three Lifetime channels.  These generated revenue in 2014 of $21.2 billion, and operating income of $7.3 billion. Once against these networks are globally distributed with the Disney channels alone having its services used in 100 different countries.  Services include film-on-demand launched in 2008, Disney junior activity programming and short films enabled watching. Following this, Star Wars in general has generated $643,000,000 in digital sales. This could have been contributed to massively by the 83,000,000 views of its online trailer on YouTube as it’s the most viewed video plus the fastest growing viewing rate so far.

Marketing also doesn’t dominant online but offline as well. Before the release in Birmingham Fashion show received a storm trooper arrival, which helped target, it's not so demographically constructed audience as stereotypically its audience would be social gamers, comic and CGI enthusiasts, sci-fi genre lovers and action lovers. Where a fashion show audience could stereotypically consist of a girly-girl fashion-ista’s, the romance genre lovers and clothes enthusiasts. Plus once again we have storm troopers appearing on the X factor to promote it to an audience of music, fame and celebrity lovers.  Furthermore marketing has made it onto food brand packaging, such as cheesetrings, oranges and mountain dew drinks. This appeals the movie to everyone who has to buy the basic necessities like oranges, as they buy the promotion anyway therefore Star wars cleverly promotes the movie every citizen.

However that all digital marketing, what about digital and non-digital merchandising? Well furthermore not only does Disney provide services on the TV but also on other platforms. Smartphones, tablets and digital media player devices contribute to another multi-media platform called apps which including the newly released  ‘My Disney Experience’ available to worldwide users. However apps weren’t around 5 years ago so other platforms such as DVD/ VHS sold Disney products on them, which are still sold today. Plus another very important platform is video games, such as in 2010, Disney Channel ‘All Star Party’ was released for the Nintendo Wii.  However this Star Wars ideology has once again sold 138 games profiting them $3,400,000,000 worldwide.

Other merchandise for Star Wars movie I studded was 20 books and eBooks titled "Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens", with releases starting in late 2015, prior to the film. The series included books by Del Rey and Disney-Lucasfilm publishers and comic books from Marvel Comics that have profited them around $1,820,000,000.  However not forgetting their collectables, which are not only in the HAPPY MEAL boxes at McDonalds but the $1.5 billion pounds from hard-core adult fans with stable incomes and generations who grew up with this product, passing onto their kid are buying new character figures e.g. $150 for the new Droid, the new Hasbro companies personalized light sabers ranging from $10-$200 and much more.

Until next time...bye!