when i think of disney the first thing that comes to mind is fun excitement family-friendly entertainment and maybe even a little bit of magic oh yeah and people lots and lots of people but the one thing that never really occurs to me is just how close disney came to complete and utter failure and how they were able to turn it all around and save themselves thanks to a clever and also incredibly unlikely marketing and branding campaign and that's what this episode is all about so let me tell you a story behind one of the most
powerful and profitable marketing campaigns that disney has ever had as well as five important lessons that you can take away from it and immediately apply to your own business or idea or message i'm also going to explain why i'm wearing this watch and maybe more interestingly how you can win this watch nope not an exact copy of this watch but this exact watch that i'm wearing right now right here in this video alright let's get started but to help me tell this story we first need to go back way back to 1920 where walt disney
himself first began his animation career with the kansas city film ad company in missouri now even though this is where walt got his start it was a couple years later in 1922 when he joined forces with his friend of iwerks possibly the world's most interesting name and they created a company called lafagram films and started to produce a series of different cartoons around different stories and fairy tales it was a year later though in 1923 that disney first produced alice in cartoon land this was a combination of both animation and live action and was originally
intended to be a pilot in a whole series of future alice cartoons but this is where things start to fall apart within only a few weeks of its completion disney filed for bankruptcy packed up all this stuff left kansas city and along with his brother roy moved to california to try to make it as a cinematographer alice in cartoon land however actually turned out to be a pretty big hit and as more and more orders four more alice cartoons from different distributors started to roll in well it sort of compelled disney to re-open his shop
in california with his brother roy soon after that the rest of his team moved from kansas city to california and they spent the next four years working on these alice films then four years later in 1927 disney made the strategic move towards an all-cartoon series and created the character oswald the lucky rabbit and within a year disney had made 26 of the oswald cartoons but oswald wasn't so lucky or in this case disney wasn't so lucky because another problem then presented itself a problem however that would eventually lead to disney's greatest success here's what happened
walt who was looking to secure another round of funding in order to produce another year of oswald the lucky rabbit cartoons well he went to his distributor and realized some pretty unfortunate news you see walt's distributor had gone behind his back and hired most of his animators out from under him but to make things worse upon re-reading his contract disney realized that he didn't even own the rights to oswald the lucky rabbit and so there was pretty much nothing he could do nothing that is except create a newer better and more appealing version of oswald
and so in 1928 with the release of the animated film steamboat willy the world was introduced to mickey mouse one of if not the most iconic and recognizable cartoon characters in all of history now clearly the creation of an iconic mascot and brand ambassador like mickey mouse to represent your business is a stroke of genius but the real business and marketing and branding success took place a few years later during one of the darkest times in economic history and with an unlikely product that even walt disney himself didn't think was going to sell the year
was 1932 and the now 10 year old disney company was struggling it was the great depression and people were out of work and out of money and well greatly depressed yeah it's a terrible joke i know it was at this point that walt disney hired a fellow by the name of hermann k cayman to act as his licensing agent kay's job was to start hiring out mickey to hawk different products and this is the first lesson from this story appreciate it's totally cliched but the reality is if you want to succeed you really do need
to think outside the box in this case looking for other ways to capitalize on the mickey mouse brand in the book mickey mouse reader it describes how when walt was first presented with the idea to put mickey mouse on a watch well his response was that it'll never sell fortunately he was wrong as the book goes on to say the watch now outsells its nearest children's competitor watch ten to one and this is lesson number two that you need to think twice before you take advice most people are simply going to say it'll never work
that is until it does in this case even though walt himself didn't think the idea was going to work he trusted k enough to go through with the idea and it's a really good thing he did because it wasn't just children's watches that were selling with mickey mouse on them as even a number of very prominent and very influential leaders and celebrities in the space started to wear the mickey mouse watch people like grace kelly sammy davis jr john lennon andy warhol johnny carson and even buzz aldrin the famous astronaut who followed neil armstrong onto
the moon on that fateful day july 20th 1969. and this leads me to lesson number three which is that influencer marketing has been around for a very long time long before the term influencer even existed this is because the boosts in authority and credibility and leveraging other people's platforms has always been a very effective marketing strategy and so what started on may 22nd 1933 when the patent was first filed for the mickey mouse watch a watch i might add that was originally sold for 2.98 cents and whose pin lever movement was made up of surplus
from world war one well that watch became a cultural icon and this is lesson number four the fact that a little bit of fun goes a really long way and the worst thing that you can be in business is boring and it turns out that this inexpensive and fun little watch was exactly what the market wanted and it proved this when during a single promotion at macy's over 11 000 mickey mouse watches were sold in a single day and in only a little over two years they had managed to sell 2.5 million mickey mouse watches
and in 1957 the 25 millionth mickey mouse watch was presented to walt disney who somewhat interestingly actually wore a rolex and not a mickey mouse watch and this is lesson number five in that establishing a powerful brand can sell pretty much anything so at this point there's two things that you might want to do first if you'd like to enter for your chance to win this exact mickey mouse watch not another one like it but this exact watch that i'm wearing right here right now in this video all you need to do is to like
to comment to subscribe and then i'll pick a winner from random using the random number generator and announce the winner on my email list so if you're not already on the email list all you need to do to join is visit adamerhart.com cheat sheet or click the link in the descriptions below it's fast it's easy and it's free next for even more marketing strategies and what these actually look like in the real world the next thing you're going to want to do is check out the video that i've got linked up right here on tesla's
marketing strategy so make sure to check it out now and i'll see in the next video and they're being led by an outspoken media savvy and polarizing leader the one and only elon musk who is basically a walking talking marketing machine so while their business growth
