#With the fact that Disney refuses to use Oswald in anything

[sincerelyalexia-blog1]

The Happiest Brand on Earth: Same Story, New Strategy

I recently had a conversation over the phone with my five-year-old cousin. With Christmas coming up, I asked him what he wanted from Santa. As a Disney fan, naturally, his answer was “anything Disney”. I also grew up watching Disney and am a Disney fan myself! This is the only thing we have in common, but is the Disney that I love, the same as the Disney he loves?

Fun fact: Walt Disney’s first character for Disney was actually Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit in 1927. Mickey Mouse was later introduced in 1928

Disney has built an entertainment empire! Disney is known to exceed in storytelling, connecting with their audience through different storylines and characters, and building relationships with them. They are viewed as a highly influential brand that inspires creativity and promoting healthy choices.

For example, in “Finding Nemo”, after watching the scene where the shark says “fish are friends, not food”, my cousin refused to eat fish for a good week or so!

Before I start rambling on about how cute my cousin is, let’s focus on Disney’s content. While on the search, I stumbled upon their Facebook. I was amazed at how many Facebook pages, Twitter pages, and Blogs that Disney had; such as Disney, Disney Channel, Radio Disney, Oh my Disney, and there was even one for the mouse himself! They are truly sticking to their persona and their presence in social media is no joke! Each page has its own focus on content, different from each other.  For this particular post, we’ll focus on the Oh My Disney’s blog and Facebook.

Content Strategy

Oh My Disney shared memes, GIFs, videos, offered different quizzes to find your “Disney persona”, and Disney related articles. All a little bit different within each platform. If my cousin was to stumble upon this page, I’m sure he’ll be confused. This suggests that Oh My Disney is targeted towards their older audiences. Maybe people who grew up watching Disney and have strayed away.

I personally love this idea! Take Monster Inc. for example. The movie came out when I was a young kid, probably when I was around the same age as my cousin. Fast forward, but going back in time in the movie, when Monster Inc. University came out in 2013, which talked about the monster’s college life, I had just graduated from high school and heading off to college. The timing of the movie relating to my real life experience was impeccable! It was almost like the story grew up with me! Coincidence?! I think not! I feel this was a way for Disney to reconnect with those kids that had “grown apart” from Disney. Therefore, creating something like Oh My Disney to recreate the relationship.

Scrolling through, their In Real Life (IRL) series really caught my attention. I love cute things, and this was beyond cute! Oy My Disney took existing stories, mainly form their movies and video games, and created fun short videos on how these characters would be in the actual world! In a sense, they are advertising themselves, without making you feel like they are ads.

BayMax In Real Life

Dug In Real Life

Wasn’t that cutest? The videos are fun and makes you happy. It’s great conversational piece for any one who knows or loves Disney. 

You will notice in the videos, there is no one particular age group shown. In fact, people young and old were shown interacting with the characters. Disney is trying to show that these cute characters can be loved by everyone, not just kids. They brought their story to the audience. Literally.

Also notice that nothing here is really new. They used the same classic content BUT changed the strategy to creating content that will attract their desired audience; audience development. As I mentioned before, Disney is really great at creating stories, and through the stories and/or characters, they are able to build a relationship with their audience.

To sum it up

There is an 18 year age gap between my cousin and I. Yet, Disney is able to captivate us both. That is because Disney is able to cater to the different age group. Disney is well aware of their audience and through their blogs,  videos, ]and other content they are constantly measuring their activities and changing up their strategies to create better content for them. Disney focused on building relationship with their audience through their brand and storytelling. Sharing interesting stories that people wants to share and tell others about. How awesome would if you actually met a talking dog! Through this, Disney is able to become a brand that is loved by all!

Until next time,

Alexia

PS. Who remembers the OG Intro?

[themisfitmouse]

Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney, and Pat Powers.

OK SIT DOWN KIDDIES LET ME EDUCATE YOU GUYS ABOUT WHAT HAPPEN BETWEEN THESE THREE PEOPLE WAY BACK IN 1929

So basically people know that Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks were best friends and coworkers and had a falling out— but not many know how Pat Powers was involved.

So I’m going to go through, in detail, and try to explain this as best as a 16 year old with no business knowledge can do so. I won’t include anything involving Savie- I’ll reblog this later and add her pov on this subject. I made this post so I could expand on what actually happened as opposed to how Savie would explain it.

Because there’s so much friggin’ drama that goes down in this, which triggered a HUGE chain of events like g esh.

And as a heads up, I’m so sorry I didn’t know this was going to be 3 pages long on a google doc.....

anyways— lets get started:

So actually I lied, this story doesn’t just involve those three people, it includes a couple others. But in this case it starts with Lee DeForest, the inventor of the Phonofilm waaaay back before this even went down.

On March 12, 1923, DeForest first introduced the Phonofilm- which “recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These parallel lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back into sound waves when the movie was projected.”

I honestly have no idea what that even means BUT what you need to know is that it recorded sound directly onto film. Now, in 1926 DeForest had to announce bankruptcy because of other sound systems coming in AND he was dealing with two lawsuits, so basically he was in trouble. DeForest also only had access to an incomplete system of the Phonofilm for contract reasons or whatever.

HERE’S WHERE PAT POWERS FIRST ENTERS THE SCENE. In June 1927, Powers tried to make a bid for the DeForest company and lost. HOWEVER, instead he hired William Garity (a technician for DeForest) to clone the Phonofilm as best he could— which he named the Powers Cinephone. (so basically, Powers had a knock off of DeForest’s invention)

DeForest was far too busy with his own financial issues to do anything about it, so Powers ended up getting away with this.

AND HERE’S WHERE THE BIG MAN HIMSELF ENTERS- DISNEY. skip to a couple years later, and Walt and his crew are about to make the first sound cartoon to air on the big screen, Steamboat Willie. However, they needed a sound system to get the music and sound effects onto the film. So he traveled up to New York City, and decided on Pat Power’s Cinephone. But here’s the thing... he didn’t give DeForest ANY credit.

(and I’d like to note that on the wiki page, it says that it’s ‘a decision he would later regret.’)

Walt signed a contract with Powers on February 14, 1929 saying that “Disney will pay 25 cents per foot of negative film, and $13,000 licensing fee per year for ten years for use of the Cinephone sound system” (here) again I have no idea how to business so I copied and pasted, sorry. Keep in mind that this all takes place within 1929 to early early 1930.

They continue using the Cinephone for a while, until later on that year when Walt came across an issue. Though the Silly Symphonies and Mickey cartoons were successful, he felt like they were not receiving enough money from Powers. So he decided on two changes to his company.

First; he asked Iwerks (here he is finally) if he could draw just key poses, while the other, lesser paid animators did the in between animations as opposed to Iwerks animating every single cell at a time. He did this because it was more efficient, and it might cut costs down. Second; he asked Powers for more payments for the cartoons he and his company were producing. So Roy went up to New York to confront Powers about this.

Before I get too deep into this, let’s take a step back and look at Ub Iwerks. 

Iwerks is an amazingly talented animator, not only that, but he was Walt’s best friend and most trusted coworker. He was with Walt way back in 1919 while working for an art studio in Kansas City- when all this was just a dream. He almost single-handedly animated all of Plane Crazy- Mickey’s first cartoon. Not only that, but he can animate very quickly and beautifully, in fact, many people wanted to credit him for creating Mickey- even back in his day.

Despite this though, Iwerks reported on multiple occasions that he gets the worst of Walt’s anger and frustration. He’s been known to be brutal sometimes- even admitting that the icon he puts in public is far happier than he is in real life. Iwerks has had to deal with the most brutal end of Walt’s anger for a long time.

Now here’s where the real drama starts.

Pat Powers believed that Iwerks was the genius behind the studio- if he were to take him away, then the ENTIRE DISNEY STUDIO would fall. So instead of Iwerks and Powers agreeing to Disney’s idea- they instead refused both. Walt decided to take things into his own hands and confront Powers about this in New York. 

BUT INSTEAD EVERYTHING FALLS APART

While Walt was away, Iwerks told Roy that he wanted to quit. Why? He told Roy that they have way too many “personal differences” and he can’t work for him anymore. Not only that, but he was sick and tired of Walt’s frustration always taken out on him. It’s mentioned somewhere that Roy tried to send a telegram to Walt saying that he would ‘try to keep Iwerks here as long as he can’, but eventually he failed, and Iwerks packed his things and left.

SO CUT BACK TO NEW YORK Pat Powers offered Walt a new deal- a five year contract between their companies. Walt refused this, and Powers revealed that he already took Iwerks from their company, and signed him for double the pay that Walt was giving him. That’s one of the reasons Iwerks left— because he was offered his own studio and employees to run it.

So basically, Walt came back home with no sound system to make anymore sound cartoons, and he lost his best animator, best employee, and best friend.

In 1930, Iwerks had his own business up and going by Powers and his financial backers. Within this time frame, he produced Flip the Frog, which became the first color cartoon to hit the big screen. However, after a while, his studio couldn’t compete with Disney’s and went bankrupt in 1936.

But want to know something really sad? History basically repeated itself.

In 1927-1928, Mintz took away Oswald due to his contract when Walt asked for more profits, AND he took almost all his employees as well. This all happened while Walt was away from his own studio too.

Disney apparently had a nervous breakdown on October 1931‍, which he blamed on Powers and trying to keep up with his business. So he was practically forced to take a vacation per doctors orders to recover.

...

However, Iwerks did end up coming back to the Disney studio. In 1940 he got another job there, this time as special effects. I can probably imagine, though, that Walt was ecstatic to have his best friend back on board <3