Disney’s Brand Badly Damaged

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Disney’s Brand Badly Damaged

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24/7 Insights

  • A recent analysis reveals that Disney’s brand valuation is sinking.

The Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands is the gold standard for brand valuation. This year, the analysis showed that Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS | DIS Price Prediction) dropped by 9% to $47 billion. It was one of only 14 brands out of 100 that lost ground

The methodology determining the value is complex and has a “black box” aspect, which may be a way to get brands not on the list to be valued by Kantar. Although this is a bit cynical, it would be a perfectly rational way to get revenue.

The company that owns the brand must be huge to reach its figure. Its primary goal is determining how people “feel” about a brand. A rotating polling effort covers 4.3 million people and over 21,000 brands. The brand must appeal to “relevant and potential” customers. It also must come “spontaneous to mind” in its category. Finally, how much does the brand alone contribute to “corporate value”? Anyone who does not see the black box aspect must not be paying attention.

Disney has been battered by both bad news and controversial news. Its earnings have been poor. It went through a public proxy fight with raider Nelson Peltz, who lost his efforts to get two board seats but made $1 billion on the transaction. Almost immediately after the fight, Disney posted abysmal quarterly numbers. There has also been a great deal in the press about charging customers at its theme parks unusually high ticket prices. Although any one of these might not be considered crippling to its image, taken together, they paint a grim picture.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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