...EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Growth in the theme park industry is a challenge in today's market. Theme parks will not grow if they don't diversify their resources. The Walt Disney Corporation is a nationwide multi-varied entertainment company which is a household name to millions of people throughout North America. Michael Eisner who is Disney's chairman and chief executive officer knows that his company will have to diversify in order to meet his targeted growth rateof 20%. Eisner wants to follow one of Walt Disney's famous quotes which is "We cannot hit a homerun with the bases loaded every time we go to the plate. We also know the only way we can even get to first base is by constantly going to bat and continuing to swing" In order for Disney to meet this 20% target Eisner knows he will need to look at new industries and overseas expansion to be successful. Since the Walt Disney Company is reaching a saturation point in domestic markets the corporation has recruited several notable executives and officers to fill its key management positions. Out of these positions only one of the ten corporate officers and three of the four group executives are Disney veterans. Eisner is hoping that with some new blood the company may generate new ideas to meet its corporate objectives which are: 1) to sustain Disney as the world's premier entertainment company; 2) to maximize shareholder wealth through a target annual growth rate of 20 percent and a 20 percent or greater return on stockholders equity;...
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...ckey Mouse Many years ago who would have believed a small little rodent creature would be the icon of not just a multi-billion dollar company, but a symbol of innocence, youth, and happiness. The icon of course is no other than Mickey Mouse, a character that has hundreds of different meanings to many different people. Mickey today is not the same mouse that first appeared in 1928. Mickey was once a mischievous, adventurer, and over the years has transformed into a cheerful, calm, educational tool. Mickey Mouse originally created to be only an animation appeared on the big screen on November 18, 1928. Mickey Mouse’s first appearance was in “Plane Crazy” (1928). This short film was about Mickey becoming a pilot as an attempt to impress his future girlfriend Minnie Mouse. His goal throughout the cartoon was to get Minnie to kiss him while flying the plane. He tries so hard to get the kiss that he leaves Minnie to no other choice, but to parachute out of the plane to escape. Shortly after this cartoon was made another one titled “ Gallopin’ Gaucho” (1928), but it was not until “Steamboat Willie” (1928) that Mickey became very popular. During Walt Disney’s time other cartoonists were trying out innuendo and sexuality, or trying to steal ideas from one another, the Walt Disney creations became original, enjoyable and something for the entire family, regardless of age to enjoy together. Mickey Mouse has a very unique personality that represents his founder Walt Disney...
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...that it is today because of their ability to foster the imaginations of their employees, and the shrewd business sense of men like Michael Eisner, and Walt Disney himself. There are many entertainment companies that have success that stems from their ability to market their brand to children. Disney's continued domination comes from the knowledge that, to be the most profitable, you must create “timeless family entertainment.”. As Walt Disney said, “Your dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.” Walt Disney was a semi-successful cartoonist at a young age when his creation “Oswald, The Lucky Rabbit” became a hit in 1927. However, he was muscled out of the “Oswald” franchise when his distributor hired his animators away from him. Disney was not aware that, according to his contract, he did not own the rights to the cartoon rabbit. Disney made sure that with his next creation, Mickey Mouse, that no one would be able to capitalize on his creative property. He had a profitable swing in 1928 with “Steamboat Willie” and the subsequent licensing of his cartoon's imagery on a pencil box. With the earnings he made, the Disney company had a financial stability it never previously had. This allowed Walt and company to focus on the bigger picture, and the ability to chase more lucrative ventures. Walt and his brother ran the new company different than almost any other organization ever has. There was no boss, there were no titles, it was a group effort from...
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...Vračević Željka University of Banjaluka Faculty of Philology English Language and Literature REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMININITY IN DISNEY CARTOON PRODUCTION: An Analysis of Selected Examples The purpose of this essay is to explore how media, especially Disney cartoons, affect gender, particularly young girls and how the representations of females within the media affect the viewers through stereotypes or ideals to live up too. THE INTRODUCTION (the explanation of media influences and basic notions of women representations in Disney Production) A good deal of feminist writing in the field of culture has been concerned with the representations of gender and of women in particular, and it is claimed that these representations of females reflected male attitudes and constituted misrepresentations of “real women”. Meehan (1983) analyzed the stereotypes into which women are commonly cast on television and the analysis showed that “good women” are, or are expected to be submissive, domesticated and home-centered while “bad women” are rebellious and independent. She concludes that “American viewers have spent more than three decades watching male heroes and their adventures, muddied visions of boyhood adolescence repete with illusions of women as witches, bitches, mothers and imps “. All researches about the media influence give the same conclusion that the mass media is a powerful resource through which viewers develop their...
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...1. Why has Disney been successful for so long? • Disney has been an extremely successful company for almost 90 years. They have been able to maintain a high level of profit, but most importantly keeping entertainment as the main essence of the company. Their value proposition begun as a child-oriented business, and soon after realized they could be far more successful if they appealed to an audience of all ages. They met the entertainment needs of their audience, and were able to charge a relatively high price, close to their willingness to pay where the consumers still felt they were getting their moneys worth.1 • They have been successful for so long because of the internal strategies they used. Even though they have different strategies for each company, they have managed to maintain a central one as a whole. For example, the company was divided into many business units (media networks, studio entertainment, theme parks and resorts, consumer products and internet and direct marketing, see Exhibit 3) and Asner was able to create a synergy group in which he selected different representatives in each unit that report to him directly in order to maintain a culture of cooperation and teamwork inside the company. For this objective they created the synergy “boot camp” in which great executives have to work at the bottom of the hierarchical system, in order to create bonds between each employee of the firm. • A huge part of their success comes from their ability to evolve as time...
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...learning, you tend to retain more information a little bit at a time instead of trying to remember all at once. [4] If, I was a juror and I knew about this information then I would definite bring it to light, the fact that we create our own memories to make life more efficient. There are numerous ways that people forgot information without even realizing it. Elizabeth Loftus did studies on manufacturing memories to bring this topic to light because a lot of people were serving time in prison because of these types of memories. She did a study about people visiting Disney World and asks about what type of characters they meet. For example Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character, there were a lot of people who remember touching and hugging Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, even thought we all know that this information is incorrect. I did more research on Loftus and it turns out that she herself had memories of finding her mother dead, when...
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...Disney OutlineInformative OutlineThesis: My audience will learn a brief history of the Disney Company and their plans to take new directions in the future.Introduction: Briefly tell the audience a short history of Disney and the plans they have for their company and plans for future ventures.Attention Getter: Disney first started out making cartoons but later ventured into major films, radio, television programs and even vacation packages. Now, Disney has acquired new companies and will journey into the world of many multi-media platforms, mainly video-gaming. Let’s take a look to see where the company is going with their new plans moving into the future. I. First main point: The foundation for Disney began with Walt Disney in the 1920’s. A. Cartoons marked the beginning of the Disney Company. 1. Visual aid: Use a picture of Mickey Mouse as the very start to the Disney Company. 2. The success of cartoon shorts sparked construction of Disney Studios. B. The success of features and cartoons made possible the ideas to build a theme park centered on the world of Disney. 1. Visual aid: Use a picture of Disney’s theme park, Disneyworld. 2. Explain that after the success of theme parks, merchandising became another big part to the evolution of the company. 3. Visual aid: Use a picture that represents some of the merchandise that Disney produced. II. Second Main Point: Where the company is today and what they have done to keep moving forward to producing family-type...
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...Who can forget about the 8 princesses? From the wonderland, from the castle , from forest and from sea? With the dancing black mouse, they called mickey with his friends Donald Duck with Daisy Duck and Goofy with Pluto, but in the end you will ask yourself who is the one behind those moving cartoon characters it’s Mr. Walt Disney, Familiar isn’t? Disneyland I guess, you know about the famous land in HongKong that is full of Disney characters. Mr. Disney born on December 5 1901 in Chicago, his family settled in a village. At 1909 Walt attended in New Park School of Marceline, Walt Completed the second grade at Kansas and at school he met Mr. Walter Pfeffer who came from family of the catre aficionados. After 2 years, Wakt start to had a job that is selling newspaper , for 6 years walt sells newspaper, he wake up at 4am in the morning until evening, he found the work exhausting and he often received bad grades.Most of time you can consider Mr. Walt as a businessman , in 1917 his family acquired shares in the O-Zell jelly factory. He began as freshman at Mckinley Highschool he became the cartoonist for the school newspaper , drawing patriotic topics on World War I, And with hope to join the army Mr. Walt drop out of Highschool at the age of sixteen but he was rejected for being underage , afterwards Mr. Walt and his Friend joined the Red Cross and Mr. Walt becomes an ambulance driver in France for almost a year. As he comeback in his hometown, he seek for a job, but Mr. Walt...
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...1. Why has Disney been successful for so long? (reference to Industry Analysis, Disney's chosen strategy, Disney's sources of Competitive Advantage and comment on sustainability of advantage) Disney has remained successful for myriad reasons, not the least of those is its ability to constantly realign its strategy to the trends of the market. Disney is a company that survives by continually realizing the depth of a new idea. The company harvests every available profit from its ventures before acquiring and moving to newer and more forward thinking endeavors. It uses its strength of foresight to predict up and coming industry trends and its incredible scale and wealth of resources to dominate the market. Fundamental understanding of corporate strategy has allowed Disney to vertically integrate during its early days in the film business through the creation of its own distribution network. This forward integration move proved to be an important facet in the success of the Disney strategy, as it allowed them to save at least one-third of the gross revenue for each film. In addition, Disney seemed to have a complete understanding of what it means to have corporate synergy. The company utilized its corporate strategy to successfully diversify, creating a set of complementing and cross-promoting business units that leveraged the already strong Disney brand to maximize shareholder value. A strong corporate culture offers support in uniting the effort brought together by the different...
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...Disneyland opposed. When billion dollar companies have employees that make low income, should the companies be helpful to ensure that their employees have affordable housing close to their place of employment? In this paper I will discuss this as well as determine who the relevant market and nonmarket stakeholders are in this situation? I will also state what possible solutions to this dispute I think might emerge from dialogue between SunCal and its stakeholders? This case study was quiet interesting to me. Disneyland makes billions of dollars a year due to their employee’s hard work and determination. According to our text; “Walt Disney, the company’s founder, had famously spelled out the resort’s vision when he said “I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in Disneyland. I want them to feel they’re in another world.” (Lawrence, A. T. & Weber, J. 2011) Because of this so called “vision” Walt Disney had, affordable housing could not be built close by the resort by SunCal. Of course things like this sadden me because of the low income employee’s. It is my opinion that companies should always take good care of their employee’s. By doing so; their employee’s will take care of their companies. So, who are the relevant market and nonmarket stakeholders in this situation? According to our text; “Market stakeholders are those that engage in economic transactions with the...
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...Six Flags America Six Flags is a fun, exciting and thrilling place that many people seem to enjoy and go to very often. Six flags was founded in texas and was first called Six flags over texas. It is a very enjoyable theme park that will leave you wanting to come back. Six flags has about 19 active parks, altogether they are visited by over 24 million people a year. Six flags is located in Woodmore CDP, Prince George's County, Maryland, near Upper Marlboro, and in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. If you are going to Six flags the coast you may find is very expensive. To get in for one ticket it is almost 70 dollars for one person. In addition parking is charged and extra 25 dollars. To top it off food is an additional 10 to 15 dollars...
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...The September 6, 1999 Fortune article entitled, “Eisner’s mousetrap,” describes the well known Disney Company as a large organization ($24 billion in revenue in 1999) that “has simply stopped growing.” The status of the company was examined in detail by the article and a number of problems were revealed. This paper is based on the information provided by the article and is divided into two sections. The first section discusses four reasons for the difficulties currently confronting the Disney Company. The second section offers suggestions that would allow Disney to addresses the difficulties it now faces as it successfully changes. Reasons Why Disney is Facing Difficulties The myriad of problems facing Disney can be traced to four causes. The difficulties began with a dramatic shift in the strategic context under which the company operates. This shift highlighted shortcomings in the company’s structure and culture. And CEO Michael Eisner’s hands-on, meddlesome approach has thwarted efforts to turn around the company. Disney’s strategic context. Tushman and O’Reilly define strategic context as three key factors that help managers understand the opportunities and constraints that fie before their organizations. The factors are: (1) the environment in which the organization operates, (2) the resources available to the organization, and (3) the history of the organization. The strategic context is the vital first step in Tushman and O’Reilly’s congruence model. Once the strategic...
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...Walt Disney “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” This famous quote was said by someone that most/ if not all of us loved as a child. He was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, and philanthropist. He was nominated for 48 Academy awards and 7 Emmy’s, holding the record for most Oscar nominations. Can you guess who it is? Yes, I am talking about the one and only Walter Disney. Walt was born on December 5, 1901. Dropped out of high school at age 16 to join the military and became an ambulance driver overseas in W.W.I. Although, Walt Disney, didn’t graduate high school he did win honorary degrees from several universities such as Yale, Harvard and UCLA. Walt became the successful person that we know today because of all of his many creations. In 1923, Disney moved to Los Angeles to become a film producer or director. When he failed to find a job, he returned to his love of producing cartoons. His first studio was actually in the back half of a real estate office. Finally he gained success in 1928, when he released the first short cartoons that featured Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney himself played the voice of Mickey for over 2 decades. The mouse’s name was originally “Mortimer.” He was later renamed by Disney's wife, Lillian, to, "Mickey." Along with his creation of Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney was personally involved in the production of 19 animated...
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...What does Disney do best to connect with its core consumers? Justify the strategies used by Disney. Disney runs a customer-oriented business that brings the company much profit. At the same time, it also has developed several ways to target its core consumers. In my opinion, what Disney has done to connect with them is quite essential. Firstly, Disney starts to involve new business. After 90-year development, customers expect Disney can create something new to make them interested. As soon as Disney realizes their demands, it introduces Disney Channel, Touchstone Pictures and Touchstone Television. It’s convenient for consumers to touch Disney works through this channel. Besides, many movies have been published in the name of Touchstone Pictures since 1984, such as splash , Armageddon and so on. It’ s the pricing policy of Disney that has successfully reached a whole new generation of children. For example, classic Disney films on video are sold at extraordinarily low price, so that the majority of family can afford to watch these movies. Once Disney attracts those children’s attention, they will become its customers sooner or later. Secondly, Disney concentrates on the Disney Difference . ...
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...Disney's other ventures for ABC included "The Mickey Mouse Club" (1955-1959) and "Zorro" (1957-1959). These and such "Disneyland" broadcasts as the Davy Crockett series led to a bonanza from the licensing of such products as Mickey Mouse Club hats, Zorro swords and capes, and Davy Crockett coonskin caps. Through careful market positioning of his product amid those of major film corporations, Disney focused on family entertainment. Live-action films took historical and often patriotic subjects in Johnny Tremain (1957), Old Yeller (1957), Tonka (1958), The Swiss Family Robinson (1960), and Polyanna (1960). The Shaggy Dog (1959) began a series of low-budget comedies such as The Absent Minded Professor (1961) and Son of Flubber (1963) that became mainstays of the company's production. Popular fantasies like Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and Babes in Toyland (1961) led to the blockbuster Mary Poppins (1964). Animation continued in Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), and The Jungle Book (1967). In 1961 Disney changed his broadcasting alliance from ABC to NBC with "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" and the less successful "Disneyland after Dark" series. With more than one-third of corporate income coming from the leisure park, Disney began development of the Mineral King resort. Stalled by ecological concerns, Disney initiated...
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