Between Books - Inside the Disney Marketing Machine

It has become a family tradition to watch the Disney parade on ABC on Christmas day.  During this two hour presentation, viewers see a parade filmed primarily from Walt Disney World on a network owned by Disney with hosts employed by ABC and Disney cable networks which highlights the parks in-between video snippets about Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, Aulani, Disney films, and everything else you  can think of made by the mouse.  If Synergy, a much maligned work for marketing integration, had a showcase this parade would be it! 

Inside the Disney Marketing Machine: In the Era of Michael Eisner & Frank Wells by Lorraine Santoli outlines the author’s experiences within Disney marketing and publicity efforts beginning in 1978.  Santoli moved to California planning to be a script writer but finding a very different career in Disney marketing.  She would eventually move into the position of manager of Corporate Synergy and Special Projects.   In this role she would market Disney to Disney!   Santoli would interact with numerous Disney legends including Charlie Ridgeway, Jack Lindquist, Frank Wells and the synergy champion Michael Eisner.  Santoli outlines a number of her projects marketing Disney parks and creating synergy experiences.   Her synergy discussion provides in-depth detail on how she was able to build and support a highly effective synergy machine. 

Overall, I found Inside the Disney Marketing Machine easy to read, enjoyable and helpful.  One of the important lessons that one finds in Santoli’s writing is the power of personal relationships within the workplace.  It is the relationships that she created throughout Disney including those between others that made synergy work.  As a professional, one reads of catered breakfasts and some may think “why do you need to bribe employees to do their job?”  Seriously I have heard this complaint in the last month.  But really Santoli was creating connections which fostered teamwork through networking, the treats were just the tool.  Stronger connections were forged within the company and units were more willing to work with each other.  The second part of her dastardly plan was really information sharing.  Due to the relationships she had created in the diverse company, key champions would give attention to her targeted messages and best of all act on them.  These are key business lessons that we can all learn from; the power of relationship and information.  Most professionals can likely reflect on projects that broke down due to a lack of networking and communication.  And much of that breakdown is often based on when people do no read and act on messages.   

Though as a Cyclone fan I do need to remind everyone that Iowa State University (Go Cyclones!) and the University of Iowa are two very different schools.  Of course, I assume only a minority of readers are ISU alumni who take a certain pride in their school’s unique Disney connection!  But sadly this reviewer had his cardinal and gold socks on when he read her accounting of the Mickey Mouse cornfield.   

Inside the Disney Marketing Machine is an excellent account of the founding of Disney’s highly effective synergy campaign.  Santoli teaches readers how to market within a company and the results of increased integration, cooperation and profits.  Santoli takes us from the ground up as synergy was created from scratch within Disney.  And we can all learn valuable lessons about relationship building from her experience, especially since we can still see synergy’s tremendous results today for Disney.   And of course, Disney fans will love looking at the synergy machine from the inside of the mouse. 

Review Copy Provided by Theme Park Press 

Walt's Windows - Mickey's Cornfield

One of my favorite stories in Jack Lindquist’s In Service to the Mouse is set in Betweenland.

Lindquist was flying across Texas one day and realized that he could see circles created by natural gas fields at 35,000 feet.  His mind then jumped to the ability to see a famous three circled profile from a plane.  As he considered the idea, he realized that a Mickey Mouse that could be seen from airplanes would be a good idea for Mickey’s 60^th birthday in 1988.  After a vast amount of research it was determined that an Iowa cornfield would provide the best color contrasts to see Mickey Mouse from the air.  Lindquist’s staff contacted Iowa State University (or should we say Between University) and selected together the farm of the Pitzenberger family of Sheffield, Iowa.  In a turn of irony, the Pitzenberger family rented the 3,000 acres from a gentleman named Walt!  The small town embraced the idea of the Mickey Mouse birthday card and used it as an event to promote their small town of 1,224 (Lindquist, 183-4).

An Associated Press story recounts how Joe Pitzenberger created the mouse,

Using a design developed with the help of a surveyor, Joe Pitzenberger planted corn in the shape of Mickey’s head surrounded by oats in a day and a half last spring.  He said it took just three hours longer than usual to plant the field, which has been kept alive by rain that has eluded some other areas in the state (“Iowans help Mickey Mouse Celebrate”)

Magical rain was the key to growing Mickey Mouse in Iowa.  The summer of 1988 was a drought for Iowa.  Yet, the rain came to Sheffield and the crops grew and Mickey Mouse, the crop circle, took shape on a Betweenland field (Lindquist, 185).

The design consists of 6.5 million corn plants surrounded by 300 acres of oats, and its 1.1 miles from the tip of Mickey’s nose to the end of his ear, said Disneyland spokeswoman LouAnne Cappiello (“Iowans help Mickey Mouse Celebrate”).   

Photo Taken from www.mouseclubhouse.com

As they say in Field of Dreams, If you build it they will come.  And come they did.  For the official opening Disney put on a Birthday party in Iowa.  Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy all attended and met with guests.  Earforce One, a Mickey shaped hot-air balloon, soared in the Iowa sky.  Around 15,000 people came to celebrate Mickey’s birthday.  On the following weekends Iowans visited Sheffield to see Mickey’s profile from miles around.  The publicity went beyond Iowa as the cornfield was covered by major media outlets.  And overflying airlines alerted passengers to the hidden Mickey outside the airplane (Lindquist, 185). 

Sometimes we dream of Disney, trying to think of ways to reconnect when we live far away from Orlando and Anaheim.  Sometimes we need to remember that the mouse sometimes comes to us!