Page 62 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

You Better Believe It 43

With brilliant foresight, Disney decided on a re-release policy that would bring
his movies to a new generation of viewers at 5- and 10-year intervals. But again,
Walt’s prescience was dependent on his adherence to core values. He intended
his movies to last—and last they did, because he insisted on excellence.
Disney’s cartoons and animated films look as fresh today as when Walt’s
animators created them. That’s because he paid attention to even the small-
est detail of production and combined the most skillful drawings with the
best available technology. At a time when many animators were using 6 to
8 drawings per second, for instance, Disney insisted on 24 drawings. (All
animation went to 24 frames per second with the advent of sound, but the
superiority of the Disney technique can be better understood by comparing
it to today’s average Saturday morning cartoon. Even though these cartoons
run 24 frames per second, they use only 6 to 8 drawings per second, which
means the same drawing is repeated three to four times. Disney animation
provides 24 unique drawings per second.)
Equally important to Walt’s long-term planning was the fact that he
never lost sight of his market and the family values that endure. Re-released
Disney films have made as much, if not more, money on their second release
than they did on the first.
Today, The Walt Disney Company applies the same policy to the DVD
market. When a Disney movie is released on DVD, it stays on the store shelf
for six months and is then withdrawn for a specified period. People who don’t
buy it during the Disney-designated time frame simply have to wait until the
next time it’s back on the shelf. Tightly controlling distribution allows Disney
to market its product over and over to succeeding generations of viewers. Since
1992, according to Video Store Magazine, six of the eight top-selling videos
were Disney videos, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Lion King
tied for number 1.
The long-term mentality is apparent throughout the Disney empire—in
its real estate transactions, for example. Although Walt was never interested
in real estate as a personal investment, he took a wholly different approach
when it came to his theme parks. And his experience with Disneyland only
served to harden an already instinctual tendency to take the long view.
In 1954, when Walt bought the 160-acre Anaheim, California, parcel
for Disneyland, he was constrained from acquiring additional land by limited
financial resources, the already heavy debt he was incurring, and estimates
of what it would cost to build his park. But Walt never ceased to regret not
buying more land, especially as his extraordinarily successful park became