The Walt Disney Company, also known as Disney, in terms of it's income the world's second largest mass media broadcasting company in the world, after Comcast, another American mass media company. The Walt Disney Company create a variety of both physical products media products, such as television shows, films, music, theme parks, radio products and web portals but are best known for their family-orientated film and television. Currently, the company's gross revenue stands at $48.81bn and their assets are valued at $84.19bn, showing the huge success of the company.
Disney was founded on October 16th, 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney, who were born in Chicago, Illinois but later grew up together in Kansas City. The project began when Walt Disney began to create a series of animations known as "Alice Comedies", with Ub Iwerks, a fellow animator that Walt met whilst studying at Kansas Art Institue. This project was being additionally financed by Roy O. Disney. Eventually, "Alice Comedies" lost popularity as did Walt and Ub. By then however, the two were already working on a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which was hugely successful until 1928, when they had the rights for the work stolen from them. A short time after this, Walt Disney was doodling on the train, when he created two mouse cartoons, that later went on to be Mickey and Minnie Mouse. After years of development and success with these characters, Walt started The Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio with Roy, which soon established itself as the leading American animation company before diversifying into live-action film production, television and theme parks. Throughout this time the company had several names: The Walt Disney Studio, Walt Disney Productions and then finally, The Walt Disney Company in 1986 following Walt's death in 1966. To this day the company remains very successful.
From the reputable company image that Disney built up over the years, the first Disney theme park was built and created in 1955, in California, under the supervision of Walt Disney himself. However, he passed away in 1966, so wasn't able to follow the success of the park. Following this, many other Disney theme parks were built such as in Tokyo, Florida, Paris and Shanghai. Disneyland has a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world, with over 650 million guests since it opened. In 2013 the park hosted approximately 16.2 million guests, making it the third most visited park in the world that calendar year.
Another example of a hugely successful area is Disney television. Disney have their own dedicated channel known as 'The Disney Channel', which was first aired in 1983. The channel is available to approximately 98,142,000 pay television households (85.94% of households with at least one television set) in the United States. Originally, Disney Channel was mostly marketed to a family audience, followed by a younger audience in the 1990's, but it now includes older children and teens. In addition to the main Disney Channel, Disney also caters for it's younger viewers with Disney Channel Junior, which targets children aged 2 - 7, and Disney XD, targeting children aged 7-14. This means that most age groups are covered, reflecting one of the reasons why it is so successful. According to the Internet Movie Database, the most successful Disney Channel shows in terms of ratings are Even Stevens, That's So Raven and the Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
As aforementioned, the 2013 film with a $150,000,000 budget, Frozen, is currently Disney's highest ever grossing movie. Frozen is a fantasy story of character Anna and her friends as they attempt to rid Anna's home of a spell, casted by her sister Elsa, which creates an eternal winter. On the film's opening weekend it took $67,391,326 in the USA at the box office and a further £4,704,940 in the UK. In total, the film has grossed $1,279,852,693, exceeding it's budget by $1,129,852,693. This makes Frozen the 5th highest grossing film of all time and the highest grossing animated movie. In order for the release of Frozen to be such a success, it relied heavily upon the marketing from the distribution team Walt Disney Motion Pictures, Disney's dedicated distribution company (again this reflect's the breadth and enormity of the company). A big part of this marketing campaign was through partnership with other companies, allowing for maximum exposure and awareness of the film's release.
One company that has helped increase the popularity of Frozen and that was therefore partly responsible for its huge gross was Apple. This was through the use of it's iTunes store, which has 800,000,000 customer accounts. The film Frozen contains numerous songs as a part of its narrative; the most well known being Let it Go, which received copious awards, such as a Grammy and Golden Globe award. Disney allowed iTunes the rights to sell and distribute a number of these songs, which raised awareness of the film a huge amount. Let It Go made over 3,000,000 sales and reached the top end of the music charts in most countries, due to it being published on the iTunes store. This almost had a viral effect on the song, as many people became aware of it. This meant that listeners were in turn made aware of the film, which increased it's popularity and awareness, meaning more people watched it. In addition to the music, the iTunes store also released an app based on the Frozen film, called 'Frozen Free Fall'. As people bought the app, it began to appear on the central App Store page, under the 'Popular' and 'Top Grossing' section. This raised awareness of the application as it meant that it could be seen by and advertised to people who hadn't searched for it specifically. This raised awareness of the film similarly to the way that the song releases encouraged a new audience to pay attention to the film release. Google Play, the application store for android also released the songs and apps, expanding the market further still.
Another internet-based company that Disney worked with was YouTube. They used Youtube's free video publishing as well as advertising service to their advantage due to it's huge potential audience. Disney released a free sing along version of some of the songs that it released on iTunes, receiving around 335,000,000 views. This created a sense of interactivity with the audience which was very effective as it allowed them to feel involved, and the fact that it was free for users meant that it could be played repeatedly for no cost. Also on YouTube, was the whole film available for purchase at £10.99. This is was a successful place to sell the film due to the huge market that it offers. Finally, Disney placed trailers for the film on YouTube prior to the film's release, which attracted lot's of attention from users.
Due to Frozen's main target audience being children, Disney collaborated with a range of companies to create and release a full range of Frozen merchandise, in the form of toys. This was done as the marketing executives at Disney realised that the characters Anna, Elsa and Olaf realised how popular the characters were likely to be. After the merchandise was created, Disney sold the rights to the products to Hasbro, an American multi-national toy and board game company. The public responded very well to this range of 200 toys and sales revenue reached £35million in the UK alone. This merchandise was so popular that Disney had to limit the number of toys available per person in many stores such as Toys R Us to only two. In addition to this, many companies got Disney's permission and then used Frozen's characters on their product packaging even when their products were completely unrelated or irrelevant to the film. For example, Loom Bands and Campbell's Soup. Many cheaper budget stores such as Poundland stocked products like this, as it meant that customers who couldn't obtain the coveted official Disney goods could access Frozen related products. This made the character's faces seem familiar to customers in shops, which again raised awareness of the film greatly.
In conclusion, Disney is a very large and successful organisation, who are responsible for the success of a plethora of films. Much of this success from films such as films comes from the strong marketing techniques that it uses, such as synergy and collaboration with other large companies in order to appeal to the largest market possible.
One company that has helped increase the popularity of Frozen and that was therefore partly responsible for its huge gross was Apple. This was through the use of it's iTunes store, which has 800,000,000 customer accounts. The film Frozen contains numerous songs as a part of its narrative; the most well known being Let it Go, which received copious awards, such as a Grammy and Golden Globe award. Disney allowed iTunes the rights to sell and distribute a number of these songs, which raised awareness of the film a huge amount. Let It Go made over 3,000,000 sales and reached the top end of the music charts in most countries, due to it being published on the iTunes store. This almost had a viral effect on the song, as many people became aware of it. This meant that listeners were in turn made aware of the film, which increased it's popularity and awareness, meaning more people watched it. In addition to the music, the iTunes store also released an app based on the Frozen film, called 'Frozen Free Fall'. As people bought the app, it began to appear on the central App Store page, under the 'Popular' and 'Top Grossing' section. This raised awareness of the application as it meant that it could be seen by and advertised to people who hadn't searched for it specifically. This raised awareness of the film similarly to the way that the song releases encouraged a new audience to pay attention to the film release. Google Play, the application store for android also released the songs and apps, expanding the market further still.
Another internet-based company that Disney worked with was YouTube. They used Youtube's free video publishing as well as advertising service to their advantage due to it's huge potential audience. Disney released a free sing along version of some of the songs that it released on iTunes, receiving around 335,000,000 views. This created a sense of interactivity with the audience which was very effective as it allowed them to feel involved, and the fact that it was free for users meant that it could be played repeatedly for no cost. Also on YouTube, was the whole film available for purchase at £10.99. This is was a successful place to sell the film due to the huge market that it offers. Finally, Disney placed trailers for the film on YouTube prior to the film's release, which attracted lot's of attention from users.
Due to Frozen's main target audience being children, Disney collaborated with a range of companies to create and release a full range of Frozen merchandise, in the form of toys. This was done as the marketing executives at Disney realised that the characters Anna, Elsa and Olaf realised how popular the characters were likely to be. After the merchandise was created, Disney sold the rights to the products to Hasbro, an American multi-national toy and board game company. The public responded very well to this range of 200 toys and sales revenue reached £35million in the UK alone. This merchandise was so popular that Disney had to limit the number of toys available per person in many stores such as Toys R Us to only two. In addition to this, many companies got Disney's permission and then used Frozen's characters on their product packaging even when their products were completely unrelated or irrelevant to the film. For example, Loom Bands and Campbell's Soup. Many cheaper budget stores such as Poundland stocked products like this, as it meant that customers who couldn't obtain the coveted official Disney goods could access Frozen related products. This made the character's faces seem familiar to customers in shops, which again raised awareness of the film greatly.
In conclusion, Disney is a very large and successful organisation, who are responsible for the success of a plethora of films. Much of this success from films such as films comes from the strong marketing techniques that it uses, such as synergy and collaboration with other large companies in order to appeal to the largest market possible.
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