My Full Sail Discussion Board for 12082010

The blog I decided to cover from Ries is “How Left-Brain Management got us into this Recession”. The article is interesting because it explains five concepts that businesses did not adhered to that caused issues with their branding and led to poor sales.

1. Management is focused on reality, when the real problem is perception.

2. Management is focused on expansion when the real opportunity is contraction.

3. Management demands "better" products when the real opportunity is "different" products.

4. Management expects rapid growth when the real opportunity lies in the opposite direction.

5. Management values "creativity" when the real opportunity lies in "credentials."

After reading the blog, I wanted to take a look at Mascots and how they adhere to these five concepts in relation to Law 8 The law of the category . We should also consider the mascot as part of our branding. A Mascot can be anything related to a cartoon or a rapper. Mascots, but logos silently speak for our brand. For example, GEICO’s Gecko speaks on behalf of the company better than their logo itself.



Law 8 The law of the category ­ a leading brand should promote the product or service category, not the brand

Disney helped create the category Family Entertainment with the lunched of cartoons such as Mickey Mouse. As the Reis (2002) suggests McDonalds entering this category was beneficial commercially for McDonalds at the same time helped developed the category as part of US and eventual Global culture (Schlosser,2002).

However, Disney comparatively started to lose its ability to make smart decisions because it’s leaders didn’t know wither to pursue new types of products and service or develop products and services that reflected it’s past successes. Mickey Mouse for example represents the times that founder Walt Disney took his brand to a new national level (History of Disney). Walt designed a mascot to represent his company that took elements from the current culture and market trends. The animated shorts that Mickey Mouse stared in

Although Mickey’s character design had changed throughout the years to reflect popular trends, Mickey started to loose it’s simple lovable roots. New forms of Family Entertainment from companies such as Pixar, developed new modern characters that represented a new category of family film, Digital Animation. A new question now faced Mickey could he contend in the category of modern digital entertainment?

1. Management is focused on reality, when the real problem is perception.

It seems that Disney’s leader’s considered that Mickey by himself was not sellable because the reality is the Mickey Mouse Franchise may not be something that the general public would buy. If this was the case, the problem was not the public but the public perception. This would mean that Mickey had to be repackaged; in turn, Disney would have to rebrand itself because Mickey represented so much of the Disney’s brand.

3. Management demands "better" products when the real opportunity is "different" products.

Mickey Mouse would venture into Japanese Video games with Square Enix called Kingdom Hearts. The game did more for Disney because it showed that Disney’s worlds and History could be made interesting for Video gamers. Of course Mickey Mouse had been in video game before, but with the imposed corporate ideas on developers, no one real had the creative freedom to rebrand Mickey for Digital Entrainment.

Rebranding Mickey Mouse to be Epic. Epic Mickey is now attempt to make a new Disney product that represents their ability to adapt the old for today’s markets. It’s based on the success of Kingdom Heart observably because it has element from Kingdom Hearts, so it’s safe to assume they want to keep that market from Kingdom Hearts.



Disney is attempting to rebrand again. Epic Mickey represents the Disney Brand trying to sell Mickey Mouse in today’s market. However, Mickey Mouse may not be more than a mascot. Because when Christmas comes, the sales of Epic Mickey will demonstrate if Disney can successfully rebrand itself in the market place.



What we can learn from this is how a brand represents the time it comes from?

How mascots represent the company’s brand, and its history?

How issues in effective decision making affect a company’s ability to effectively represent its brand and products?


Ries, Luara (2009, March 6) How Left-Brain Management got us into this Recession
Retrieved from http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/2009/03/how-leftbrain-management-got-us-into-this-recession.html

Ries, Al., and Laura Ries. The 22 immutable laws of branding: how to build a product or service into a world-class brand. 1. ed. New York: Harperbusiness, 2002. Print.