Reawakening The Magic Bob Iger And The Walt Disney Company Case Solution

1. Problem Statement

There is a tremendous need for Disney to concentrate on instilling creativity in terms of unique content, distribution mediums moving beyond the over-reliance on existing characters, sequels and remakes.

2. Overview of the relevant case facts 

The issue identified above is the need for Disney to foster creativity in terms of its content, finding new distribution mediums and strategic alliances. This is evident from the creation of few characters by Disney in the last few years due to resistance by the Disney’s Management to pursue a creative idea as Mayer pointed it out “that making a great creative product so hard.” Thus lack of creativity impacted Disney's performances in the form of movies released; Dinosaur (2000) and Lilo and Stitch (2003) failing to create an impact.

Without Pixar acquisition, the success of the movie, frozen could not be possible which became “the fifth biggest in box office history” in 2013. This along with movies such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo were only possible through Pixar's collaboration. There is a constant need for Disney to create relevant content to keep the audience engaged as in 2015, Disney's stock price declined due to "loss of 3.2 million subscribers" primarily due to the over-reliance of Disney on featuring shows on its never-ending characters.

3. Analysis

i. WOT Model

The need for Disney to instil creativity is termed as a weakness which is in line with the internal environment making it necessary for us to resort to SWOT Analysis for deeper understanding of the issue.

Strengths

• The acquisition of Pixar proved to be a huge success in terms of generating creative content evident from the release of Frozen which became the fifth biggest in box office in 2013.

• Disney was able to benefit from the use of multiple mediums to connect with the audience, e.g. the agreement to create Marvel content for Netflix.

• The revenues earned by Disney from international distribution increased reaching a benchmark of 27% by 2015 and increased to 11% for Europe and North America.

• ESPN proved to be a successful stream of revenue generation medium as it was ranked no.1 sports channel reaching 93 million households. Its most-watched program, Sports Centre, was ranked as the most /watched sports show being aired up to 12 times per day and having a target audience of 115 million viewers.

Weaknesses

• The stock price of Disney declined due to loss of 3.2 million subscribers primarily due to lack of engaging and creative content.

• Disney's overreliance on existing characters grew through the strategy of the remake of classics seen as low risk strategy.

• Disney’s management increasing reluctance to pursue a creative idea and not being seen as a factory further aggravated the situation.

Opportunities

• ABC Network's initiative of airing shows like Dancing with the Stars and Modern Family proved to be a success; thus the development of similar shows can be seen as an innovative option by Disney.