COMMENTARY: Disney turns PG-13
Issue: Disney increasingly becomes a mainstream brand
Commentary by: David
Buried amid all of the hype for the spectacular $132mm opening weekend take for “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” is an interesting branding question. What effect will releasing PG-13 movies with the Disney name have on the brand? The Wall Street Journal today summarized Disney’s strategy:
Disney said moviegoers of all ages turned out to see the PG-13-rated “Dead Man’s Chest,” which stars Johnny Depp as swashbuckling pirate Jack Sparrow. That interest is a prime example of Disney’s movie strategy: The studio is extending a move in recent years toward making more Disney-branded fare appealing to a broad audience.
While this strategy seems to make financial sense (PG-13 = broader audiences = more potential moviegoers = bigger profits), this advertising blog believes that Disney is making a serious error which will hurt the brand in the long term. The question Disney should be asking is:
What Does Disney Stand For?
We know what Disney has traditionally stood for: children. Family-friendly entertainment was a means to creating the best possible experience for children. In fact, Disney has been so successful in this quest that the brand has a created a huge reservoir of trust with parents. Want to pop a DVD in the player for the kids to watch? If it has “Disney” on the box you don’t need to worry about it - it’s fine for young kids.
How Does Pirates Change This?
Disney’s move to use the Disney name instead of Touchstone Films (which they had set up to insulate the children’s franchise name Disney from adult titles) on films like the original Pirates and the sequels is slowly but surely undermining Disney’s expertise in children’s entertainment. It is clear that Disney believes this to be a good thing. But it is not. Imagine all of the places that your children would like to go for a vacation. Disney is somewhere near the top of this list, right? To get your tourism dollar, Disney World and Disneyland simply have to keep you from vetoeing your child’s vote.
Now imagine where you might choose to take your family for a vacation if it was entirely up to you. The Bahamas? Europe? This list is much longer and Disney may not feature so prominently on it. Here is the central dilemma of this Disney positioning choice - when Disney stops being the #1 choice for children and starts being family fare - or even worse mainstream entertainment - it loses its competitive advantage. Like thousands of brands from Pierre Cardin to The Ground Round, Disney risks losing its expertise and thereby its competitive power.
This will not happen overnight, of course. Pirates of the Caribbean will not confuse many parents who know what to expect, and the Disney name is fairly small on the original movie’s DVD packaging. But over time, expect to see a real shift in what Disney means. Competitors from Six Flags to Time Warner should be licking their chops because if Disney continues to follow this path they will be easy prey to more focused brands.
July 11th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
But if the movies were originally based on a Disney ride (which was a point highly hyped w/ the first movie), wouldn’t packaging them under Touchstone hurt the profits or confuse customers, or at least dilute the message that the film originated w/ Disney?
And, if that was Disney’s primary motivation in releasing the films under the Mouse’s name, maybe this trend won’t continue? Just a thought. It’ll be interesting to see what develops with later releases and films.
July 11th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Jen,
You make an excellent point about the connection between the Disney ride and the movie. In itself, Disney could probably get away with the connection to Pirates because of that link and I agree that introducing Touchstone might have confused things.
What surprised me is that Disney told the Wall Street Journal that it was their plan to continue expanding the use of the Disney name to general audience (meaning PG and PG 13) movies. That creates the problem, I think.
July 14th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Oof, if they continue that trend, then yes that could be a misake, esp. if the movies aren’t based on already-made Disney property.
July 19th, 2006 at 9:50 am
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5193590.stm
This story just out from the BBC…Two ways you could read it: A) It looks like Disney wants to focus on more family-friendly fare (the article cited “Family blockbusters”). or B) Touchstone is losing money, just make racier teen films under the Disney masthead and make boatloads of money with tie-ins.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Jen,
Thanks for the link to the bbc story. You are correct, it is probably too early to tell what Disney’s motivation is. Sometimes, though, a company cheats a brand strategy for entirely honorable reasons, gets a short-term reward and continues to cheat to get the reward again until the brand is seriously damaged. We’ll have to follow this to see what happens
dv
October 11th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Pirates 2 pretty much sucked compared to the first one. It had a few good parts, but I think it was just a prelude to the 3rd one. I hope number 3 is better!
May 15th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Kids today debate the merits of their favorite ‘R’-rated movie characters while still in sixth grade, and by eighth grade have moved on to Internet porn and hook-up parties. That “graphic novel” your freshfaced son is reading is probably a hentai manga (look it up) and that “cool tattoo” your daughter wants was invented by medium-security prisoners to mark their sex slaves. In a world like this the Disney brand smoothly extends from the wholesome to the profane. The Touchstone brand remains for the films that depict consenting adults — you know, “Adult Themes.”
December 28th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
You’re right on the spot! Disney’s current obsession with exposing the Walt Disney Pictures brand with mainstream content will cause long-term damage to the entire company. I’ve never understood why, if Disney wants to be associated with mainstream content, not place a sign under the Touchstone Pictures name like “Part of the Magic of the Walt Disney Company” - just like on their internal stationary materials?