Do It Like Disney

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Over time, The Walt Disney Company has managed to maintain a consistent, positive image. Compared to small(er) companies, The Walt Disney Company overlaps several industries and markets with many initiatives such as multiple television networks, film distributors, partnerships, amusement parks & resorts, radio, and retail stores. Through all of these entertainment aspects, The Walt Disney Company continues to represent themselves as: 

“Happiest Place on Earth” – Walt Disney World and Disneyland are recognized as two of the “happiest places on Earth.” If I’m speaking personally, I could not agree more! By taking costumes, rides & attractions, dining, and shopping to the most realistic extent, Disney exceeds your expectations. All work revolving around the company’s expectations relies on the Communications/PR team (this could be you!) Events in Fantasyland or street teams roaming around Animal Kingdom with promotional fliers and coupons are all little reminders of PR work to keep it the “happiest place on Earth.

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Positive influence for children – The Walt Disney Company releases films, television programs, and music for the positive influence and growth of children. A few Communication tactics for this reputation would be the use of Disney Channel actors and actresses in campaigns for healthy living, eating, and learning, the marketing of specific products in retail stores that teach children colors, shapes, etc., and the face-to-face greetings with some of their Disney role models in Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

The Communication tactics are endless for a company so large, open-ended, and popular. Initiatives involving events, social media campaigns/contests, meet & greets, marketing, sales, and other possibilities can be planned on a large-scale for maximum results. All and all, these tactics aid The Walt Disney Company (and your company) in continuing to maintain the brand they intended to be.

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Maximizing Value Is Key to Maximizing Profit in a Student-Run Firm

“Maximize profits! Create shareholder wealth!” Sounds a lot like your intro to economics class, right?

These are the values driving many businesses today. Whipped into a frenzy by the single-minded pursuit of these goals, organizations often end up sacrificing good judgment, value and, ultimately, the very success they were striving to achieve. By focusing their entire effort on the bottom line, many American organizations have reduced their value.

This trend can be reversed with value-driven management. Instead of focusing solely on profits, value-driven management is aimed at creating and sustaining value over time. Whether your student-run firm is well-established or just getting started, this management style is extremely effective when it comes to maximizing profits. By creating value from within the organization, the public and potential clients will begin to value your organization as well.

Here are a few value drivers to ultimately maximize the profits of your student-run firm:

Focus Within
Building an organization where the values of employees are in sync with organizational values creates a strong, motivated team. Motivating and retaining top student talent is crucial for the sale value of your firm. Holding frequent workshops that seek to improve firm members’ leadership and skills is one way to create value from within. Creating fun programs that focus on the social dimension of your firm is another way to build the firm’s team cohesion and can ultimately lead to a higher task orientation; this also creates organizational value as well as job satisfaction.

Diversification of Clients
For the firm to function as a proper business, it is important to constantly develop new business. Having a wide variety of clients that change from year to year optimizes the firm’s revenue potential. It also factors into how much growth potential your business has. Possessing a diverse client portfolio exemplifies that your student-run firm’s experience is invaluable.

Creating a Realistic Strategic Growth Plan
Any organization that wants to reach the next level needs to have a realistic plan that outlines the firm’s potential future growth. This plan should include a distinct business model, and how that business model can roll into new markets successfully. Being able to verbalize this plan to potential clients will increase your firm’s market value and ultimately increase its profitability.

There are many more value drivers that are key to growing your firm’s value now and in the future. By focusing on these few value-driver examples, your student-run firm will be able to maximize its profits.

How will you make the most of your student-run firm?

This blog has also been featured on PRSSA National's blog, PRogressions.

Effective Strategic Communication-The Basis of all Human Interaction

Being the rather indecisive person that I am, it came as no shock that I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I wanted to study coming into college. So naturally, I took the easy road, and like so many other freshman, enrolled myself as an undeclared. During my first year at Temple I took the typical GenEd classes, sprinkled in with some advertising and education classes, hoping that I would find my niche. Upon completing my freshman year, I thought I had a better understanding of what I wanted to do with my life; I had no idea.

After an untypical chain of events occurred over the next year, including transferring out of the university only to find myself re-enrolling at Temple the following year, I finally had some guidance in my life. This guidance came during Summer 2010, as I was perusing the Temple website looking for perspective majors. There are only so many of those personality strength tests you can take before you finally have to stop and ask yourself: What do I want to do? Surprisingly enough, once the communications light was shed on me, I was hooked. I wanted to study strategic communication. I knew that if done effectively, strategic communication is the basis of all human interaction.

Unlike other majors in the university, strategic communication teaches you how to express your needs and desires in a way that gets others to stop what they’re doing, and listen to what you’re saying. Oppositely, it promotes attentive listening so you can comprehend and understand exactly what messages are being relayed. Without effective two-way communication, nothing would ever get accomplished in the world. Strategic communication is ever-present in our daily routines, though we may not even realize it. It is what separates us from other species, what drives production; it is the basis of all human interaction.

Extraordinary communicators can change the world. If you can talk the talk, you better believe people will be on your side, listening to what you have to say. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan; all phenomenal masters of communication who let their words and rhetoric bring about change. It is no secret as to why they had so many supporters. People believed in the messages they were delivering. Whether all of these messages were actually truthful and sincere is a whole different matter. The point is this: their words were empowering.

I could not be happier knowing that I will be graduating this spring with a degree in strategic communication. Learning how to become an effective communicator in this fast-pace world, where messages often get lost or convoluted, is a skill that is uncompromising to any other.

This guest blog was written by PRowl Public Relations staff member Steve Jacobs.