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Disney's 2023 releases have been duds
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2023/08/04/the-four-flops-of-2023-that-cost-disney-1-billion/?sh=4e9e00b13bed
Losses on some, profits on others. I don't see how a $100 million loss on a movie can cause a decline of market value in the tens of billion. mediocre movies cannot explain why the stock has fallen so much. Disney has always produced a lot of mediocre but expensive movies throughout its recent history [1], yet the stock has done so well , until 2022. The value is in the IP and other services, not so much box office. A movie that loses money at box office will still generate $ decades down the line through IP.
[1] https://screenrant.com/disney-biggest-box-office-bombs-disasters/#a-wrinkle-in-time-2018
Outside of some weird cases like airlines, the value of a stock is a function of expected future earnings. Shareholders may have been convinced in the past that there was potential in owning DIS. They are no longer so confident.
Disney may always have had duds, it's the cost of doing business in that industry. But I believe what the market has realized is that they have lost the ability to make the popular entertainment that makes the duds worth it. It's not a stroke of bad luck, it's skills shortage.
Marvel is winding down massively, Star Wars has been blown up for nothing, Pixar is way past it's prime, the parks aren't making much money and the political spats have tarnished the image of family friendliness that has always been a core part of Disney's strategy.
They bought so much they own all of classic pop culture and yet I'm left asking: who is going to care about Disney IP in ten years? Versus, say, Nintendo.
Basically this.
They burned a bunch of bridges and are now acting surprised at the lack of foot traffic, much like Anheuser Busch, one gets the impression that they didn't understand who their core market were.
"Not understanding core market" is a long way from "small pr stunt goes wrong". I don't think management could have imagined it would have such a long and lasting impact as what it has become. In the past, a bad PR stunt would probably be forgotten as the news cycle changes and the old product line is discontinued (the Dylan Mulvaney cans were a one-off thing, not a product line), but social media keeps it alive in perpetuity. In 1996, McDonald's Arch Deluxe burger is a notable example of a major brand misreading a market, but it did not have a lasting impact like this has. Congrats, i guess, to Kid Rock for having more of an impact on a stock price than famous billionaire short sellers like Bill Ackman, Jim Chanos, Michael Burry etc. He should get a job at a hedge fund.
It wasn't "a small PR stunt going wrong" it was "deliberately insulting the core demographic buying your product".
Because they were bad products, not attacks on their core market.
yeah with the benefit of hindsight we can say it was an attack on a core market
Disagree - almost anyone with vague ideas about american culture would have been able to tell that it is a bad idea. Only single white college educated woman deep in the blue bubble that has drank the DEI cool aid wouldn't have known. Guess what type they had recently promoted as vice marketing director.
If you were in the marketing department at AB and someone said “hey, why not send a one-time promotional can to this influencer that she’ll only market to her (highly woke) progressive following and that our core audience will never even hear about?” what would you say to convince them of how badly things would go?
It’s not really predictable, tons of red-tribe-friendly corporations have done much more woke things than what AB did and still retain that entire audience. Red tribers still subscribe to Netflix, still watch Disney movies, beloved right-adjacent brands like Chick-fil-A went full DEI and other than some Twitter users nobody cared, the core oo-rah red tribe demographic sports league, the NFL, went full woke, even NASCAR went woke. None of them saw a major backlash that convinced them to backtrack (yes, there was Kaepernick, but the NFL is still ultra-woke).
Predicting that a promotional can of Bud Lite would set this off wasn’t obvious.
I'd say "we're a lifestyle brand and this would directly contradict our brand image, so it's bad practice, like playing with fire."
Honestly, I don't get it. I empathize with wanting to expand your brand image beyond your core audience, but you grow your territory by expanding it around the periphery -- not by parachuting in on the other side of the world.
Framing this as a big-brained move seems to take more complexity than the obvious explanation: the marketing department was culturally completely disconnected from the core audience and wanted to do something that made them feel good instead of their audience, so they cooked up some arguments to do it.
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