On Branding: The Importance of Fighting for What Matters.

If you follow my writing, you'll know that I hold up the Walt Disney company as an example... pretty frequently. And that's not just because I've been a life-long disneyphile. The mouse is a fascinating company for marketers to follow because they believe in the vision, the brand, of Disney in a way that few other companies really do. From the merchandisers to the producers to the part-timers picking up trash at their many themeparks, every member of the organization understands the value of the brand they represent.

On their careers profile on LinkedIn this morning, Disney shared a post telling a story about the life rafts on their cruise liners. Here's the brief version they posted online:

Disney Cruise Line was the first cruise line to have yellow lifeboats, instead of the traditional regulation orange. Disney was granted special permission from the U.S. Coast Guard to paint the lifeboats yellow, to keep with the special color theming of the ship.

Seems silly, right? Maybe a little offensive - some big company thinking they're above the law because they don't want their life rafts to clash with the paint on their VIP buffet lines. Frankly, it's hard to argue against that.

Here's the full story.

International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations enforce a series of rules known as the Safety Of Life At Sea (SOLAS) convention. These codes dictate minimum standards for the construction and maintenance of maritime safety equipment, and have been in place since 1980. SOLAS requires that all lifeboats on board commercial cruise liners are painted orange - for visibility, and to make it obvious on sight that a vessel is part of an evacuation.

Along comes Disney Cruise Lines. Like everything The Mouse touches, they wanted their boats to be unique - recognizable from a distance. When designing their vessels, they decided to stick only to colors that were recognizably Disney - the characteristic Black, Red, White, and Yellow of Mickey Mouse himself. When it came to the ship's life boats, which form a characteristic belt around the cruise-liner's circumference, yellow was the obvious choice.

Where any other company on the planet probably would have followed the rules and painted their boats orange, Disney refused. They knew they had the weight and financial muscle to push back, and so they did. Those yellow boats were important to them. They represented the Disney brand. They represented Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse does not wear orange. Disney contacted the IMO and argued until they were granted an exception for yellow boats. The color is still visible, still obvious, and still unique. They were able to convince the IMO that yellow boats were not a safety hazard for their passengers.

Because Disney is one of the largest companies on the planet, they have the confidence to fight for what matters to their brand. They are willing to go out and die on a hill in the name of details that most of us would never notice or think about. This is a company that secretly built an entire theme park on the second story of their property so that employees could walk around the park out of sight so the "magic" would never be broken. They care about brand the way all of us should care about brand.

Of course, we don't all have the necessary weight to fight international organizations over our branding rights, but we should have the confidence to try. We should all remember that anything we build represents our entire brand, our entire company identity, and we should be willing to fight against conventional knowledge if we know our brand would suffer from it. No best practices or trendy social channels should dictate what your brand does. Only your brand should ever dictate what your brand does.

The next time your brand is getting ready to launch something new, be it a website, a product, or an ad campaign, remember to fight for your yellow boats. If you aren't willing to stand up for them, no one else will.

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These comments reflect the opinions of Tim Howell alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of his employers, partners, peers, or family members. Opinions or advice in this blog should not be taken as direct recommendations or suggestions. Any statistics, information, or metrics provided are linked to referenced source material, and are not sourced from any current or past clients, customers, or related brands.