Disney and the Beast

All companies have a target niche for the products and services that they sell to the public. Some target children, some teenagers, and others focus primarily on adults. Rarely, few companies have created multi-generational success by targeting all age groups and all types of people; Disney is a prime example of one of these corporations in relevance to the entertainment world. There are many ways that Disney has captured and maintained the attention and relationships with their audience. This blog will highlight a few of them.

Disney products have a major potential to socialize young generations. As a young child for example, the movie "Lion King" holds so many institutional characteristics. Not only does it hold a bigger picture about society,or in the movies case, "the kingdom". It unconsciously teaches children the values of the family, the school, the outsider, maturity/immaturity, growth, dangers, strangers, you name it. The movie has it all in terms of entertainment socialization. While adults pick up on these societal symbols immediately, children are absorbed in the storyline and the characters that they quickly grow to love. The events that happen in the movie instill a deep schema of how different situations work, that they will fully understand and unlock as they get older, becoming socialized by their schooling and other educational institutions. Once young children establish this relationship with a movie, that love and want in which they feel will be nurtured financially between the parents' and the company of which the movie is owned, Disney.


Not only do new audiences become turned onto old material, but Disney has teamed up with "Pixar Entertainment" to become a double successful conglomeration that puts out more new animation movies a year than ever before. All of which effect the "new-young" audiences as well as the old. In many cases, even the older audiences still watch these movies either alone or with their kids to fulfil a specific need that has been instilled by a particular product (movie). People recognize the importance of these movies in their lives and those of their children, and they become fans, and life-long supporters of the company and its products.

This weeks article about Disney, talked a lot about how the audience has a major influence in the products that they put out to the public sphere. If a movie is too gory, or too sexual, the public opinions of the audience are enough to adapt the product to their needs. This is an ingenious innovation in the competitive marketplace for animation entertainment. If there is a majority of a sampled population who agree to the movie script being too provocative or dangerous for children, Disney will re-write or re-work the script until their audience is satisfied. Once the audience is satisfied, it is guaranteed that the greater majority of their public niche will buy the product as their needs and wants for the product are met; from the very beginning. All companies feed off their public niche for ideas and innovations, but it's rare that they allow their own niche to have such a big role in creative control. Disney is the ladder, which makes it an extremely innovative and strong icon for the entertainment industry.


The Disney Corp. has successfully targeted every technological audience around the globe. This means that any person or family who own a VHS or DVD player will play host to Disney and their overwhelming advertising campaigns. Disney and Pixar as a team create and release so many new movies a year that they now have an annual standard for these releases. Their audiences now expect new releases every year which creates a strong production and consumption cycle in which financially satisfies the companies' and socially satisfies their audiences as families, individuals, kids, teenagers, and adults. Everyone else, will soon hop on the bandwagon.

Colin Johnston