One of the most successful organisations in the world, the Disney Corporation employs over 175,000 employees worldwide with revenues in excess of $40 billion a year. It's business is segmented in four key areas: studios; parks and resorts; consumer products and media networks. A few years ago, the company undertook a total review of its corporate alliances structure across all of its business units, under the direction of the Senior Vice-President for Corporate Alliances, based at the Disney Studios in Hollywood, California.

Guru in a Bottle CEO Ardi Kolah was invited to meet Lawrence Aldridge, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Alliances and other Disney executives in Paris having been previously identified by a global firm of management consultants engaged by Disney to identify the leading thinkers in the world on brand partnerships and alliances. At the time that the management consultants contacted Ardi, he had no idea they were working for the Disney Corporation.

At the meeting in Paris, it became clear that Disney had several key business challenges in growing revenues from existing corporate partnerships whose long term agreements with Disney were coming to an end and some did not look like being renewed as a result of financial pressures that many of its partners were facing within their own markets.

The added challenge was that in many cases, the Disney brand was dominant within these relationships, which had created over time a lack of focus on client relationship management and to some extent a degree of organisational arrogance that Disney itself accepted it needed to change.

The starting point for reversing this situation where there was an over dependency on long-standing corporate partners was to achieve change within the Corporate Alliances team in terms of its mind set and approach - and a stronger focus for delivering a Return on Objectives and a Return on Investment for its partners.

A one-day workshop to address these issues was prepared and delivered by Ardi to the entire Corporate Alliances team at the Disney Studios in Hollywood, California.

Design of training programme

It was important to review all the assets of the Disney Corporation that could be used in any existing or future Corporate Alliance. We also examined the confidential sales & marketing and business development plans for each of Disney's four main areas of operation in order to identify potential opportunities for bundling corporate partnership programmes across the whole of Disney's assets, for example, linking sponsorship opportunities in its theme parks with licensing and merchandising opportunities, supported by on-line and off-line promotions across its networks.

In addition, the relationships with key corporate alliances were also reviewed in order to determine which remained "at risk" of being lost and also what new corporate alliances could be formed by Disney in the future, particularly with emerging brands from India and China.

Other factors that were also covered included opening more commercial opportunities to corporate alliance partners for doing business directly with Disney.

Delivery of the training

Given that Disney is one of the world's leading entertainment companies in the world, the content and style of training presentation had to entertain, inform and engage in order to hold the interest of the Corporate Alliances team!

This was a mixture of analysis of key facts and statistics about the future shape of the global market, feedback from actual Disney Corporation clients about what they didn't like about working with Disney, a frank discussion of all key corporate alliance issues and a road-map for achieving a renewed approach to be taken in handling corporate alliance relationships on a global basis by the Corporate Alliances team.

Outcomes from the training

According to Aldridge, as a result of the training, the Corporate Alliance team successfully re-wired its thinking in how it was to manage key sponsor relationships in the future and how to achieve a higher rate of renewals amongst existing corporate partners as well as engage with new sponsors. It also understood the principles of how to achieve a Return on Objectives (ROO) and a Return on  Investment (ROI) from the perspective of its corporate alliances.

"Disney offers a partners the opportunity to get a tangible return on investment that they would struggle to get with any other property. We spend $12bn a year on goods and services and are partners are at the front of the queue when the company comes to place orders. For example, we've recently outsourced some of our print managed services to HP," explains Aldridge.

Today, Disney now has around 20 global partners with around the same number of companies sponsoring attractions locally at its theme parks in US, France, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Corporate partners that have renewed include Visa, Cola Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak and Nestle. New corporate partners include AARP, Credit Mutuel and NASA.

"When I took the job, 100 percent of the partners were wedded in the park and there were other elements. What we have been doing through a range of strategies including training is looking more broadly in terms of understanding what the partner wants and how Disney's assets can be used to achieve their business, brand marketing and communication objectives," observes Aldridge.

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