Introduction
Walt Disney is considered an icon of American brands. With movies, theme parks, television and radio, not to mention products adored by children and adults across the world, they have invented family entertainment since the release of Steamboat Willie.
It’s impossible to scale to the Walt Disney company’s size and scope without a powerful marketing genius. Disney has dominated the marketplace for years by continually adapting its marketing strategy.
This article will go you through some of the famous Disney marketing secrets to make the company successful and prosperous in such a long time.
Disney’s main strategies
The Disney Company’s marketing mix (4Ps) is a deciding factor of the company’s competitive performance in different industries. The marketing mix is the combination of strategies and tactics used to access the company’s target market: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
An efficient marketing mix will boost the corporation’s competitiveness against other businesses, such as Comcast, Time Warner, Viacom, and Sony. This marketing mix is generally employed in the worldwide operations of Disney and its subsidiaries, like Marvel Studios and Pixar Animation Studios.
This general 4P application is created according to the enterprise’s synergistic codependency and its divisions that belong to the Walt Disney Company’s corporate structure. Hence, the organization’s marketing mix is created based on the different needs of its various operations in the parks and resorts, entertainment and mass media, consumer products, and retail industries.
Product mix
Disney’s products are sketched as groups producing the product mix. As an international corporation, the Disney company owns a wide range of product lines in addition to its media and entertainment products. The strategic acquisition of other businesses is an important factor in this diversity of the company’s product mix. Disney now’s handles such various products under the categorization below:
- Media networks (cable, television, and radio programs)
- Studio entertainment (direct-to-video content, motion pictures, musical recordings, and stage plays)
- Parks and Resorts (Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Paris, themed hotels, and others)
- Consumer goods & interactive media (books, comic books, magazines, video games, merchandise, and online video content)
Disney’s products were earlier available in the media and entertainment industry. Nevertheless, the company has included products in the parks and resorts industry via expansion and diversification and the retail industry via the sale of consumer products in its amusement parks, stores, and other places.
This part of Disney’s marketing mix is anticipated to keep growing, alongside strategic refinement in business operations and trends in the international market. For instance, the corporation’s future acquisition of other companies could bring in more products and fresh product lines. That way, this part of the marketing mix demonstrates the degree of Disney’s business diversification.
Prices and pricing strategies
When it comes to Disney’s different industries and markets, this element of the marketing mix includes pricing strategies and corresponding price points, and price ranges that are separately defined according to industry and market conditions. For example, differences in development, saturation, risks, business chances, and other managerial concerns result in multiple pricing strategies in the media and entertainment, parks and resorts, consumer products, and retail market. Disney follows the pricing strategies below for its various product mix:
- Market-oriented pricing strategy
- Value-based pricing strategy
Disney uses the market-oriented pricing strategy for products like movies, which are priced based on popular industry standards. Meanwhile, the value-based pricing strategy is
applied for different products, such as memorabilia at the company’s parks and resorts.
Value-based prices are defined based on the actual or perceived value that Disney’s products have for the target audience. With this pricing strategy, the multinational business can optimize its prices provided hat it retains a robust brand image and powerful marketing campaigns. The strategies in this part of the marketing mix probably skyrocket profit margins, particularly in situations where the company’s products have weak substitutes.
Place/ Distribution in Disney’s 4P
This marketing mix element describes the places that the company uses to strategically allocate its goods to customers in the entertainment and mass media, consumer products and retail, and parks and resorts markets. The essence of these industries and markets defines the places or venues that Disney chooses to allocate its products.
For instance, the physical nature of merchandise products, like books and magazines, shows that the company needs channels that enable the transport and storage of these products to target the audience in the global market. The product distribution of Disney includes the places below:
- Movie theaters
- Disney stores (Disney Gallery, Disney Baby, and others)
- Mobile apps
- Official websites (Go.com and others)
- Licensees and other parties (cable, satellite, telecommunications server providers,and more)
The places Disney chooses to allocate its products are ranged, satisfying the diversity of the product mix. This part of the marketing mix is highly based on the types of products provided. For instance, movies are allocated via movie theaters and multinational digital content distribution firms like Apple.
Significantly, licensees and other parties are the groups of places and channels responsible for creating the largest portion of Disney’s revenues, like ESPN television programming revenues through cable networks. The system includes 3rd-party and company-owned venues, like theme parks and resorts. That makes the marketing mix a strategic consolidation of businesses for efficiently handling maximum reach via the worldwide market.
Promotion in the marketing mix
This element of the marketing mix involves the company’s communication strategies and tactics for the target audience. Disney employs various strategies, depending on the type of product being promoted. Nevertheless, advertising is the most outstanding and readily observed among these strategies, like the case of Marvel movie advertisements.
The business takes control of operational effectiveness in approaching multinational audiences via a combination of international, local, and regional implementations of marketing communications. The marketing communications mix includes some strategies and tactics below:
- Advertising
- Direct selling
- Sponsorship
- Sales promotion
- Public relations
Advertising is a traditional strategy and a significant contributor to Disney’s marketing communications effectiveness. For example, the company leverages advertisements for its movies and parks, and resorts (particularly for special events and occasions).
Great example of Disney marketing campaigns
Disney’s princess culture has become popular in recent years, with some calling out the stereotypical and antiquated tropes of its most prevailing female characters. In response, Disney has taken actions to bring its princess in a more empowering light, leveraging marketing campaigns like its Dream Big Princess initiative to do so.
The campaign includes 19 female photographers from 15 different countries, building positive images of strong female role models, such as the youngest female to give a speech at the UN or a surfing champion from Brazil. Disney also contributed $1 to the UN’s Girl Up campaign every time one of the images was shared on social networks.
Additionally, the campaign also helped Disney fight any negative stereotyping and shed light on the positive and strong characteristics of its princesses, like the courage of Merida and the touchy nature of Moana.
Resources: https://www.mageplaza.com/blog/disney-marketing-strategy.html
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