Was Disney guilty of a “violation” of its own brand with John Carter?
In analyzing the John Carter performance at the domestic box office, one thing that I’ve learned is that among the pros in the branding business, Disney is considered to have created what is alternately called a “brand violation”, or a “brand misalignment”, or “brand inongruency” with this movie. This is interesting on a number of levels, as it sheds some light on what went wrong, but also what Disney marketing may have been trying to do with its otherwise difficult-to-understand promotion of Andrew Stanton’s film.
Disney is obviously a legendary brand, not just in the US, but worldwide. Brand strategists talk about something called the “brand promise” which is the essential expectation that a consumer has when contemplated a product under a given brand. The Disney brand promise is “fun family entertainment”. Brand strategists will tell you that in everything it does, Disney will try and make sure that what it is offering conforms to that “brand promise”.
The problem with John Carter, from the beginning, is that the Edgar Rice Burroughs “brand promise” is not very congruent with Disney’s “brand promise”. The Burroughs name on the cover of a novel promises nothing about family entertainment. Instead, it promises that the story within will be heart-pounding romantic adventure in a richly imagined fantastical setting. The imagery associated with the novels has always been that of sword-bearing John Carter protecting scantily clad Dejah Thoris from threat by fantastical creatures. The stories themselves — told in first person by grown man of indeterminant age who hacks his way to a substantial body count of dead Tharks and Zodangans as he pursues romantic acceptance by the Princess of the title–are clearly written as if they are intended for adults. Over the years, they became popular with teens — but never have Burroughs’ novels been considered “family fun entertainment” in the way that Disney promises.
So …. having this problem — what were the options?
This was by no means the first time that Disney had faced a situation where it had a film that didn’t fit the Disney brand. In fact, precisely because the Disney brand is so specific, and the brand promise so well understood, Disney has a number of alternate labels which it uses for films that don’t meet the very precise “brand congruency” or “brand alignment” requirements of a “Disney” branded film. These alternate labels include Buena Vista, Hollywood Pictures, and Touchstone Pictures. Films which don’t fit the Disney brand are released under these labels — allowing Disney to keep the Disney brand “pure” and meaningful while enabling the company to work with a wider range of productions and producers than would be the case if all films were released as Disney films.
Recent examples of films released under the Touchstone label include The Help, Step Up 3D, War Horse, The Tempest, and sci-fi pictures I Am Number Four and Real Steel. Buena Vista Pictures has been used as the label for Wild Hogs, Bridge to Terabithia, The Game Plan, and Ratatouille, and even one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies — Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Notably 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, under development at the time John Carter was released, is slated as a Buena Vista Pictures release. The Hollywood Pictures label was used for, among others, Michael Bay’s The Rock.
So … why not “let John Carter be John Carter” and just put the film out under Buena Vista or Touchstone? Seems like that would have been an easy solution….but it was not the option selected.
Instead, the solution that was chosen was to basically try and take a movie that didn’t really fit the Disney brand, and then sell it with Disney plastered all over it in every way possible, which in turn meant that the pitch needed to do what it could to try and make it look like Disney fare– i.e. make it look like “fun family entertainment” even though this wasn’t really precisely what it was.
The result seems as though it could have been predicted, but wasn’t. True Disney fans didn’t really buy into the idea that this was a true Disney film. They stayed away.
And fans for whom “Disneyfication” is a negative stayed away too, even though the film wasn’t actually “Disneyfied” in the way they assumed it would be.
UPDATE:
Thinking further about this, I remembered the Kiddie TV spot that Disney put out there and was playing constantly on the Disney channel. Ironically, this spot was the most sure-footed of all the spots, at least it seemed that way to me — it felt like this was really how Disney saw the film, or wanted to see it. The problem is, the audience when pitched this way shrinks down quite a bit — pre-teen boys and Disney moms (nothing in here for girls)…..and of course this is precisely the type of thing that drives general adult audiences away from Disney films unless they have kids in the right age bracket to take with them (or drag them to it).
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From Wikipedia: “Buena Vista is a brand name frequently used for divisions of The Walt Disney Company, whose primary studios and offices are located on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, California. It was originally created by Walt Disney in 1953 after the release of Peter Pan to distribute his film and television productions, thus ending a 16-year affiliation with RKO Pictures. Some films becaus contracts were distributed by RKO until 1956. Disney semi-retired the name in May 2007, although this name is, to the present day, used for most home video and DVD distribution. The name means, literally, “good view”.[”
The version of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA has been on the back burner at Disney for a number of years. About 20 years ago, CINEFANTASTIQUE Magazine did an excellent filmbook on the 1954 version. It explained in great detail how Disney developed the project, produced, & marketed it. By the time the new version reaches screen, it will be about 60 years since the release of the previous Disney production.
A Disney production of A PRINCESS OF MARS was also a long time in coming. Given that fact, the commercial fate of JOHN CARTER is hard to accept. Of course, ERB’ s material did not fit the the Disney brand image. In fact, I would have to say that they were mutually exclusive. Everyone involved should have known better.
I think Dick Cook himself broke the branding trend with the first Pirates of the Carribean, when he apparently decided that the movie would not be a Touchstone release but a Disney one (that what I gathered from the Touchstone wikipedia entry, of course I don’t know how this is accurate). Before this movie, all Disney/Bruckheimer cooperation were released under the Touchstone label. From this point on, Touchstone was more or less an empty shell, and the line between this label and Disnet should logically begin to blur in the audience’s mind. All action-adventure movies Disney produced after the first Pirates are Disney releases, from Narnia to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, regardless of their actual ratings. Real Steel, while not really hard-edged, is saluted as a family-friendly movie, and is a Touchstone release. So I don’t think the audience necessarily associate Touchstone with harder-edged movies the way it was at its creation. I really don’t think that in the John Carter case it would have made such a difference.
Pasclahad wrote
Well, in the case of both PoP and POTC, the trailers all show the Disney Logo and immediately after it the Jerry Bruckheimer Films Logo. Given that Bruckheimer is a hugely credible brand for action films of the type Disney doesn’t normally make, this co-branding is quite important. If I’m a consumer who is a true Disney Fan — I see Disney,but I’m fairly warned by the Bruckheimer association. Conversely, if I’m someone who wouldn’t be attracted to a Disney film, the presence of the Bruckheimer logo is reassurance that it won’t be too Disneyfied. There are pitfalls with this approach — if it works, you get both constituencies, and if it fails, you lose both. But this shows awareness of the potential misalignment problem and an attempt to address it.
Prince of Persia was not a success any more than John Carter (less, if you consider that John Carter has at least ignited a vocal and highly motivated fan base — something that did not happen for Prince of Persia)….
Ralok wrote —
“am i the only one who realizes disney movies are violent bloodbaths ?”
Saw “The Apple Dumpling Gang” when I was younger — haven’t been the same since.
The first Pirates film had the well-established theme park rides to grease the wheels of it being trusted as a “Disney” property. Those who had been on the Pirates ride knew that it involved walking skeletons, violent battles and buxom women, and all of those elements had long since passed into acceptability as part of the Pirates-specific Disney brand when the first movie came out. Even so, the studio didn’t know if audiences would accept the film, and were initially reluctant to put the merchandising into full gear. From what I’ve heard, the toys only really showed up for the second film.
Prince of Persia didn’t do very well financially, so a case could be made that it suffered from the same brand mis-alignment that John Carter suffered from. And PoP also faced the uphill battle of having been branded by the media as a based-on-a-video-game movie, not unlike the challenge that Battleship faces as a result of the media branding it as a based-on-a-board-game movie.
It would be interesting to learn if any brand problems were discussed regarding PoP, and how the points raised were similar or dissimilar to the current discussion about John Carter.
am i the only one who realizes disney movies are violent bloodbaths ?
Dotar,
Just a quick note: BoxOfficeMojo now has JC at $282m. Seems to have gone up $9m in Foreign over the last week. Still climbing to that $300m mark… There’s no way this movie is going to lose Disney money in the long run. Not a massive profit, but not a loss either.
Thanks for all the work you’re doing as well.
/Nik
And as far as “scantily clad” is concerned, I guess Disney had early insurances from Andrew Stanton that he would not go that way.
In the meantime I checked the trailers of all Pirates movies and of Prince of Persia. All are advertised as Disney movies, not a mention of Buena Vista.
It’s not that violation of the branding if you consider Pirates of the Carribean. Even loosely based on a Disney park show, it was rated PG-13 and very successful. I checked on Imdb and Buena Vista seems just to be the distributor of the movies, they’re Walt Disney/ Jerry Bruckeimer productions. Prince of Persia is, too, also rated PG-13, and has no Disney connection prior to that. So Disney made its moves in PG-13 high-profile entertainment way before John Carter. I don’t see this association as necessarily a violation of their politics.
Dotar Sojat wrote —
“Several people have mentioned 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (both the 1954 version, and the one in development which isolated for release under the Buena Vista label) …. I was having a hard time remembering the story — here is the plot. It’s quite different from John Carter. The hero doesn’t kill anyone…..it’s pretty tame.”
Well, there’s all the men Nemo killed when he rammed their ships. Perhaps since such deaths are unseen they’re acceptable in a “family” film. (Don’t mean to sound snarky — perhaps it’s the wine!) But as a kid I was exposed to “Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Captain Blood” and “Jason and the Argonauts,” and I don’t think JC’s level of violence is much beyond that.
This is one of the points made in the Vulture.com’s Disney identity crisis article you posted back on May 12. Disney doesn’t know what their brand for movies is anymore. So they wind up misaligning PG-13 action movies like JCM under the Disney banner. The reason it’s misaligned is because audiences know what the Disney movie banner means to them – old timey G rated stories made for little kids or other kids stuff they see on the Disney Channel. Disney needs to either develop a strategy to redefine their brand name, or just accept the fact that audiences associate their name with old style Disney fairy tales and they should just use the Disney banner on movie reboots and remakes of existing Disney properties. I think JC would’ve performed a bit better at the box office without the Disney banner, but that change alone wouldn’t be enough to overcome the vague trailers and butchered title.
Several people have mentioned 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (both the 1954 version, and the one in development which isolated for release under the Buena Vista label) …. I was having a hard time remembering the story — here is the plot. It’s quite different from John Carter. The hero doesn’t kill anyone…..it’s pretty tame.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 Film) Synopsis
In the year 1868, rumors of a sea monster attacking ships in the Pacific Ocean have created apprehension and fear among sailors, disrupting the shipping lanes. Prof. Pierre M. Aronnax and his assistant, Conseil, are on their way to Saigon but get stuck in San Francisco by the halting of ships. The U.S. government invites Aronnax onto an expedition to either prove or disprove the monster’s existence. One of their fellow crew is the cocky master harpooneer Ned Land.
After months of fruitless searching, the monster is spotted one night. It immediately charges, and the ship’s crew are only able to fire cannons at the monster a few times before impact. Ned and Aronnax are thrown overboard, and Conseil goes in after Aronnax. The warship, burning and helpless, drifts silently and no one on board answers when the overboard passengers cry for help. The three drift in the ocean, eventually finding a strange-looking metal vessel, and realize the “monster” is a man-made “submerging boat”, that seems to have been deserted. Inside, Aronnax wanders down into the Salon, where he finds a massive viewing window and sees an underwater funeral taking place, presumably for a man on the submerging boat who was killed by the expeditionary ship’s guns.
When the submarine crew returns to their ship, they capture the three castaways. The captain introduces himself as Nemo, master of the Nautilus. He returns Ned and Conseil to the deck, while Aronnax, whom he recognizes for his work and research, is allowed to stay. He tempts Aronnax to remain with him, but Aronnax prefers to share his companions’ fate. Nemo prepares to submerge Nautilus with the three stowaways on the deck, but at the last moment changes his mind and allows them to stay. After dinner that night, Nemo takes them all on an underwater expedition to gather supplies, but Ned tries to salvage a treasure chest from a sunken wreck, almost getting attacked by a shark.
Later on, Nemo takes Aronnax to the penal colony island of Rura Penthe. Nemo reveals he was once a prisoner there himself, as were many of the crew of the Nautilus. A munitions ship embarks at sunset, whereupon the Nautilus rams it, destroying its munitions cargo and killing the entire crew. When confronted by Aronnax, an anguished Nemo says that his actions have just saved thousands from death in war; he also discloses that this “hated nation” had tortured his wife and son to death in an attempt to force him to reveal the secrets of his work. Meanwhile, Ned discovers the coordinates of Nemo’s secret island base, Vulcania, and releases messages in bottles, hoping somebody will find them and free him from captivity.
Off the coast of New Guinea, the Nautilus gets stranded on a reef. Ned is surprised when Nemo freely allows him to go ashore with Conseil, ostensibly to collect specimens. Ned goes off alone inland to explore avenues of escape. While kneeling at a pool to drink he sees a number of human skulls on stakes. Unbeknownst to him he has been spotted by a cannibal in a nearby tree. Realizing his danger, Ned runs for his life and rejoins Conseil as they are chased back to the Nautilus. Despite remaining aground, Nemo is unconcerned and the cannibals are repelled from the ship by electrical charges circulated on its hull. Captain Nemo is furious at Ned for not following his orders, and confines him to the submarine’s brig as punishment.
A warship approaches, firing and striking the submarine just as it breaks free of the reef. It descends into the depths, where it attracts the attentions of a giant squid. The electric charge fails to repel the monster, so Nemo and his men are forced to surface in order to fight and dislodge the beast. During the battle, Nemo is caught in one of the squid’s tentacles; Ned, having escaped from captivity in the struggle and in spite of his hatred for the captain (due to experiencing the destruction of the munitions ship from earlier), jumps to Nemo’s rescue and saves his captor’s life. As a result, Nemo has a change of heart; he claims now to want to make peace with the outer world, by sharing his secrets of the sea. However, this is to be short-lived.
As the Nautilus nears Vulcania, Nemo finds the island surrounded by warships, whose marines are converging on his hideout. As Nemo goes ashore, Ned attempts to identify himself as the author of the bottled messages to no avail. Aronnax realizes this and becomes furious, recognizing that Nemo will destroy all evidence of his discoveries. Sure enough, Nemo plants a bomb in his hideout, but is mortally wounded from a slug to the back while returning to the Nautilus. After haphazardly navigating the submarine away from Vulcania, Nemo announces he will be “taking the Nautilus down for the last time.” Loyal to Nemo to the very end, his entire crew declare that they will accompany their captain in death.
Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned are taken forcibly to their cabins. Ned fights back, escapes to the now deserted bridge, and manages to surface the Nautilus, hitting a reef in the process and causing the ship to begin flooding rapidly. In his final moments, Nemo staggers to a viewing window, collapses, and looks at his beloved ocean one last time as he dies.
Aronnax tries to go back and retrieve his journal, which contains a detailed account of the voyage, but the urgency of their escape obliges Ned to knock him unconscious and carry him out. The companions witness Vulcania destroyed in an explosion. Aronnax’s diary of the voyage is also lost forever, and when Ned apologizes for having hit him, the Professor replies “Perhaps you did mankind a service, Ned”. The shock from the explosion causes the Nautilus to sink even more quickly, and as it disappears beneath the waves forever, Nemo’s last words to Aronnax echo: “There is hope for the future. And when the world is ready for a new and better life, all this will someday come to pass, in God’s good time.”
Kevin Sanderson
Good thoughts. Interestingly, the 20k Leagues under the Sea in development now is a Buena Vista Release ….they didn’t have BV way back int eh 50’s, did they? Fantasia is definitely an anomaly and it took them how many years to break even with that? 40? It was definitely a “brand violation” in some fashion which took a long time to be appreciated.
I don’t think a brand violation or misalignment necessarily spells doom as long as the studio recognizes it’s got a misalignment on its hands and figures out a good, effective strategy for dealing with it. In this case it seems more like they were just in denial..they knew there was a problem but the effort they made to reconcile the misalignment was not try well-thought out or executed…….audience confusion (the outcome of a brand misalignment) existed on several levels–Disney fans were confused, and non-Disney fans were confused, and both stayed away.
It’s a shame that the folks running Disney over the last couple decades have so limited just what a Disney movie could be. Particularly because I think that John Carter is very much in line with the adventure films the studio made back when Walt Disney still ran the show. (notably 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) I believe Walt would have been rather pleased with the finished film had he been alive to see it, though that’s not to say that Walt would not have seen ways to improve the movie.
Yes,John Carter isn’t a 100% perfect adaptation but really no adaptation could ever be. All we fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs have had a mental movie of A Princess of Mars playing in our minds for years, any director you care to name would have started with an uphill battle to compete with each of our mental movies. I’m sure there is no aspect of the movie we couldn’t nitpick to death if we cared to.
It’s too bad that the execs at Disney didn’t try running the John Carter under one of the company’s other labels. Buena Vista could have been a good choice, that would let the movie have some distance from the DIsney brand but still keep it close. Touchstone offers further distance from the main Disney brand though I don’t know if it would gain much beyond what using Buena Vista offers.
Good article again, Michael! And I actually like that Kids featurette you posted. It’s the most cohesive trailer they did.
It does definitely seem like a disconnect, but Disney has been there before with Fantasia (Night On Bald Mountain and naked spirits with bared breasts), 20,000 Leagues, Ole Yeller, Some of the live action stuff for Wonderful World of Disney (like Scarecrow but they changed the young girl assistant in the book to a young boy, but Patrick McGoohan still rocked in his pre-Prisoner days), there were some of the more teen oriented Mickey Mouse Club segments from the 1950s that had teen romance. There was also The Black Hole and Tron just to name some more.
Great article! It definitely sheds some light on a few things. The first time I saw John Carter we had kids with us. And although they did come out of the theater shouting “Virginia” and “Woola,” it was a bit difficult to get them passed the subtitles (since they were too young to read). Definitely not what was expected (for kids), but I loved it! And so has every adult I’ve seen it with!!
MCR wrote:
Ha…write down the date: May 27, 2012, Dotar maneuvers MCR into handing out a (backhanded) compliment to Stanton……
As to your main point ….the evidence seems pretty clear that they didn’t really make an effort to Disneyfy it. Whether that was because Lasseter was being Stanton’s champion and telling them he deserved creative control; or whether it was because Ross just didn’t engage with the film on any meaningful level, are questions I’m trying to get answers for. But it doesn’t look like they really tried.
The thing is …. even in an “appease Pixar” situation, Ross held the trump card — the Disney brand — and could have played that card and seen where it would take him, but it looks like he didn’t.
Dotar Sojat wrote:
“But ….. in the case of Tarzan, didn’t Disney do what Disney does — “Disneyfy” the movie before releasing it as a Disney film?”
Yeah they did. Cutesy talking animals, bad Phil Collins songs and kiddie friendly humor.
“If they (Ross and Iger) were really engaged they would have either Disneyfied it or rebranded it as something other than Disney.”
Well how do we know they didn’t try to Disneyfy it? They might have and were blocked by Andrew Stanton and his ego. After all they did fear him as he told some interviewer so any attempts to make it more Disney safe probably fell by the way side. In this case that was a good thing-a rare praise I’ll give Stanton-but it still left the dumb decision to release it as a Disney film.
MCR Wrote
I dont’ think I ever actually saw Disney Tarzan …..as noted elsewhere in this thread, I was one of those people who assumed it was Disneyfied and I wan’t interested. But ….. in the case of Tarzan, didn’t Disney do what Disney does — “Disneyfy” the movie before releasing it as a Disney film?
With John Carter …. it looks like Iger and Ross were just letting it play itself out. If they were really engaged they would have either Disneyfied it or rebranded it as something other than Disney. By doing neither, they endorsed a policy that was programmed to fail.
The marketer’s halfhearted efforts seem to flow from that — it wasn’t a good fit, but because it was Disney it had to be sold in manner that was “safe” to Disney’s brand promise.
But there were the other pieces: afraid of “Mars”, afraid of “civil war era period-ness”, which led to lack of context or explanation …..oh well. I get a headache when I try to make sense of it, but I’m trying.
You have a point about the branding of Disney movies. In their animated division, Disney has been routinely and in many cases justifiably attacked for their specific branding. A happy ending for the Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Little Mermaid, and the Americanization of Winnie the Pooh are several examples. And C.S. Lewis, whose first two Narnia novels recently made it to the big screen, complained that Disney added a lot of vulgarity with his genius and clearly wished that Disney would never attempt to get his hands on the Narnia novels. Yet, the Disney brand, in being “family friendly” wasn’t always saccharine sweet and watered down in every circumstance. In movie review books, “Bambi”, “Dumbo” and “Pinocchio” often include warnings about images too disturbing for the very young and certainly the 1950s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Kirk Douglas and James Mason was of the same quality as John Carter. John Carter actually lives up to the BEST of the brand as it once was, but if Disney was at all concerned about a negative family friendly vibe from people looking up Edgar Rice Burroughs online, just referring people to Burroughs’ most famous character would have easily deflected that concern.
Kenneth Jordan wrote:
Ha….yeah — in fact the chapter in the book that deals with this is entitled “The Disneyfication of John Carter”….Also, bringing that up points out another thing. On the one hand Disney hung the Disney label on it — on the other hand they didn’t attempt to enforce “Disneyfication” on the film itself. In other words, under “normal” studio operations, fi it’s gonna be a Disney product, then the studio would ride herd on the director and make sure the film conforms to the things it needs to conform to in oder to not create a “violation”. People like your friend assumed that was happening…..me too, really — I figured Disney would be doing their studio thing to make it conform. They didn’t, and on a personal level I’m glad they didn’t. But as a business proposition, they needed to either — a) turn it into an actual Disney film that delivered on the Disney promise, or b) Don’t brand it as Disney. By doing both — branding it as Disney but not making it Disney — they lost the Disney fans who smelled a rat; and they lost the people for whom the Disney brand was a negative, because for them – the Disney branding was a disincentive, not an incentive.
Look Disney did a lot of violations with this movie (chief among them believing whatever bull Andrew Stanton told them and the absymal marketing campaign). But beyond that John Carter of Mars was never a good fit with Disney to start with. If you don’t believe that look at what they did with their version of Tarzan. These characters at best are not meant for 5 year olds and that’s who Disney mostly pursues (outside of their tween Hannah Montana audience). That and the fact that the recent regimes at Disney just make lousy movies and worse decisions. Of course whether or not releasing it as a Touchstone film would have helped…well we still have Stanton’s Mopey Carter, Mrs. Useless P. Carter and Shape Shifter Shang. Putting another logo on it wouldn’t have helped those things.
This sure explains why they did things they way they did. Maybe why they didn’t want to mention ERB in the ads, to keep people from googling him and seeing all of these not family friendly images of scantily clad Dejah. Hmmmm
Paladin wrote
Well, the decision to release it at as a Disney film was made either by Ross or Dick Cook …. and if it was a Cook decision, then it was at least ratified and confirmed by Ross, who could have flipped it to BV or Touchstone. Even if Ross didn’t really understand movie marketing (he was a TV guy), he should have spotted this problem and addressed it. Or, alternatively, MT Carney should have forcefully brought it to his attention — which she may have done.
One way or another — when it got to the marketing people the mission was: “Sell this as a Disney movie”. Their execution of that mandate was clumsy an inartful, but if you look at what they did in light of that mandate, it becomes a little more understandable. Not a lot … just a little.
Dotar,
I can even provide anecdotal evidence of this. After I’d seen the film the first time, I was in a comics shop and the owner and a customer were talking about the film. The customer said he wasn’t sure he wanted to see John Carter because it was a Disney film and he was afraid it would be “Disneyfied.” I assured him it wasn’t and he said he go see it. That sounds like exactly what you’re talking about.
So they aren’t just colossally inept, but also fundamentally stupid?
I can imagine their thought process when they first sat down to consider their marketing strategy:
“Let’s see…..we’ve got a story about half naked people on a planet engulfed in civil war where everybody carries a sword and our hero chops off one guy’s head and another guy’s arm……..oh – that sounds just like Disney family fun.”
Duh! As they used to say back on the ranch: sh– for brains!
I dont really see the issue here . . . but okay :I
I think burroughs work is pretty family friendly
Intriguing. They put it on the wrong aisle of the supermarket. The deeper the digging, the more aggravated I become. Thank you, Dotar.