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•94 The 100 Greatest Business Ideas of All Time

• Brand breadth: the breadth of franchise that the brand has achieved, in terms
of age spread, consumer types and international appeal

• Brand depth: the degree of commitment that the brand has achieved among its
customer base and beyond; the proximity, the intimacy and the loyalty felt for
the brand.

Idea 52 – Disney

You could say that the Disney company built its wholesome entertainment brand-
ing through the way it managed its people. Central to its success was the culture
created by Walt himself – smart dress code, no swearing, and the use of euphemisms
to describe the people who work there – ‘cast members’ rather than employees.

Then, through the generations, the company has used its rich catalogue of films
and entertainment to merchandise its other products. So long as the movies are in
peoples’ minds merchandise can be sold.

The Walt Disney company also more or less invented the business of character
merchandising – licensing other suppliers to use your brand. In character merchan-
dising, the brand is usually represented by a character from literature, movies or
television, such as Mickey Mouse. The brand is then used on products that are not
directly linked to the character.

So, Mickey not only appears in films, books videos etc., but he is used to sell
clothing, watches, toys, jewellery and even food. For example, until 2002 Nestlé has
had the exclusive right to use Disney characters on branded food in Europe. Dis-
ney’s earnings from this has topped $150 million, and all they had to do for this
added profit was negotiate the contract. Everything else they were doing anyway.

They have been building the brand since 1928, and now have publishing inter-
ests, theme parks, movie studios, a mail-order business, hotels and a television chan-
nel. Their declared philosophy is to build ‘an integrated system in which each Dis-
ney property enhances and reinforces the whole.’