Disney Crushed the 2016 Box Office - What You Can Do to Help Your Brand Dominate 2017 and Beyond

Last year, Disney’s films broke multiple box office records by collectively grossing more than $3 billion domestically and $7 billion globally, surpassing Universal’s $6.85 billion box office record set back in 2015. The entertainment juggernaut was able to do so with more than half of the year’s highest grossing films and a slate of movies that overall received widespread praise. Building off a great 2015, and with a number of 2017’s most highly anticipated films, Disney is on track to have another dominant performance and looks to break its own record in the coming year. 

While Disney’s incredible 2016 box office demonstrates its ability to connect with a variety of audiences, the company’s accomplishment is illustrative of how to dominate an industry by building a brand that has near-universal appeal and generating energy and excitement around diverse properties, products, and ideas. 

Find Your Following

Disney, while recognized for its global reach and influence, is largely driven by a number of valuable intellectual properties in addition to original content. In the last ten years, Disney has been able to expand and extend its brand by acquiring monstrous properties, such as Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, and by using intense fan followings as a way to bolster the overall influence and power of the Disney brand as a whole. 

Finding an audience for content is essential for creating loyal consumers as well as focusing on new target segments and demographics. Disney, while capable of creating rich and unique original content, such as Moana and Zootopia, relied on audiences it knew would watch its movies simply by utilizing the power of the brands and properties it controlled. 

Of Disney’s top 5 highest grossing films worldwide of 2016, 3 were products of subsidiary companies, each with enormous followings of their own: Captain America: Civil War (Marvel Studios), Finding Dory (Pixar), and Rogue One (Lucasfilms). 

The only 2016 films to make $1 billion globally were from Disney (Source: Box Office Mojo)

By using Pixar’s film record and Star Wars’s multigenerational fanbase, Disney further cemented its own brand and properties by marketing to the reliable audiences of the Pixar and Star Wars brands. When Disney acquired Marvel Studios in 2009 for $4 billion, they were acquiring the over 5,000 character properties, but more importantly, the audience that Marvel attracted and built from decades in print entertainment. Since then, the superhero movie studio has made more than $10 billion globally with its 14 films, controlled pop culture conversation, and has become the gold standard of summer blockbuster entertainment. 

In order to attract new viewers and consumers, a company must strengthen its brand not just by creating original content and being innovative, but also by taking advantage of existing audiences, their fandom and excitement, and using them as brand-advocates for additional properties, projects, and ventures. 

Take Time and Plan it Out

Disney’s repeated success is a testament to the idea of not just acquiring brands and mass producing whatever an audience seems to ‘demand’, but taking the time to develop ideas, plan projects, and knowing when to produce and when not to. 

After first acquiring Lucasfilms in 2012, Disney wanted to begin production on a new Star Wars trilogy as well as anthology films - Rogue One was the result of multiple years of planning, in addition to the 30 year time gap since Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Despite understanding that audiences demanded new films as soon as possible and would want sequels to films such as Rogue One if successful, Disney and Lucasfilms took their time producing Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens and cemented that regardless the popularity of Rogue One, it would not receive a sequel because it would not serve the purpose of the story. 

Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn introducing the upcoming Star Wars projects at its biennial expo, D23 (Source: Disney)

One of the key features of Disney is that its subsidiary companies, such as Marvel and Pixar, have the ability to determine their own projects and establish independent timeframes. In addition, the studio is not reactionary by prioritizing audience demand over creative and intelligent storytelling. Despite the critical and financial success of Finding Nemo, Disney waited more than a decade before introducing a sequel, Finding Dory, only approaching the project when there was a story to tell.

While having the ability to adapt to changing industry demand is crucial for business success, it is equally important to take the time to develop a project, regardless outside influence, as well as knowing when to produce and create new content.  

Diversify Offerings and Target Audiences

While many movie studios offer a variety of films with specific target audiences, such as with horror or romantic comedies, Disney is able to capitalize on the entire market by not only diversifying its content, but also by creating films that appeal to a wider audience.

Disney’s core theme is creating family-friendly content that can be enjoyed by everyone. Under this broad umbrella, each of its films, regardless genre, maintains storytelling elements and narrative structures that can appeal to people of all ages. The Jungle Book reintroduced a decade-old classic to a younger audience while also attracting fans of the original animation; Finding Dory found new viewers while also appealing to the nostalgia of older fans of Pixar’s Finding Nemo. 

While Disney maintains multiple large brands, it expands its content by creating films that fit different sub-genres as well. Rogue One, despite being a Star Wars film, is also a wartime movie that can appeal to younger male audiences in addition to older Star Wars fans. Queen of Katwe, arguably Disney’s best film of the year, targets both fans of drama and biopics as well as those interested in sports films – all while infusing the 'Disney feel' and making a movie that can be enjoyed by the entire family. 

Disney's hits were blockbusters as well as original stories and retellings of classic tales (Source: Disney)

Building and expanding your brand is achievable by both creating products with specific target audiences while also retaining common themes and concepts that can appeal to multiple demographics and can help create diversity while maintaining a central brand and message. 

Care About Making Good Products

Disney may have the luxury of high profile intellectual properties and multigenerational fans, however, the most important reason the company sees repeated box office success and entertainment dominance is because it creates good content. 

In addition to appealing to people of all ages and creating universally relatable movies, Disney’s films have developed a track record of being excellent pieces of cinema and an enjoyable time at the theater.  

In an age bombarded with sequels and blockbusters, seemingly made with little care only for the purpose of making money, Disney focuses on box office returns in addition to telling compelling and interesting stories. Where other superhero films fell flat, (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, X-Men: Apocalypse) Disney and Marvel constructed superhero films that were not just filled with mindless action but actually provided creative storytelling, spectacular visuals, and characters you could invest in. 

In the age of blockbusters, good storytelling can separate global hits from one-week wonders (Source: Disney)

Disney focuses on creating good content before it focuses on profiting from a film. This way of thinking gives subsidiary groups such as Marvel and Pixar the ability to experiment and the freedom to create original content that prioritizes quality over box office – if the product is good, the financial success will follow. As a testament to Disney’s content having widespread appeal and focus on producing great films first, audiences gave every 2016 Disney film an ‘A’ rating on Cinemascore and all but one a positive score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Many make the mistake of solely looking for business opportunity while ignoring the content they actually create. By making worthwhile content or providing valued services, not only will financial rewards follow, but it strengthens a brand for future opportunity as well. 

Final Thoughts

Disney’s spectacular year at the box office was both a triumph for the studio as well as a model for companies looking to find their own message and market niche. The movie studio and entertainment powerhouse showed that achieving dominance within a particular industry involves curating and utilizing existing excitement as a form of marketing in addition to carefully preparing projects years before they appear on screens. Through Disney’s broad appeal and emphasis on quality, the company demonstrated the importance of not only creating a financially valuable product, but one that’s equally valuable to the consumer as well.

The key to building an independent and unique brand is prioritizing product before profit. Disney’s success shows that taking the time to plan and create can ultimately lead to even greater rewards in the future and global influence for generations to come. 

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Erwen (Alex) Zhu is an intended Business Major at the University of California Berkeley and writes as a millennial voice for marketing, social media, entertainment, politics, and cultural impact.

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