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Inside the Disney Marketing Machine: In The Era of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells
The Secrets of Disney's Success
Disney's former Director of Corporate Synergy, Lorraine Santoli, gives a first-person, behind-the-scenes account of how she and her colleagues spearheaded Disney's financial and cultural recovery during the Michael Eisner and Frank Wells era.
When Santoli left NBC to join the Disney team, the studio that Walt built was in a rut. Its leadership was weak, its films forgettable. The arrival of Eisner and Wells brought revolutionary change to how the company operated and, more important, how it marketed its products. The word of the day: synergy.
In Inside the Disney Marketing Machine, Santoli shows you what it was like to reshape a faltering company into today's media juggernaut. Her enlightening anecdotes and stories, along with exclusive contributions from senior Disney management, include:
Coming up with creative marketing campaigns that led to big box office for new Disney films and a surge in theme park attendance Carrying out Eisner's directive to bring synergy to every division in the company Creating the tools that underpin Disney's amazing success in cross-promoting its products, from films to theme parks Collaborating with celebrities, national media, and Disney's movers-and-shakers to put the Mouse back on topCome inside the world's most powerful marketing machine and see how Disney really makes its magic!
186 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 6, 2015
10 people are currently reading
737 people want to read
About the author
Lorraine Santoli
7 books11 followersBiography
Lorraine Santoli, former Director of Corporate Synergy for The Walt Disney Company has established herself as an innovative communicator, creative thinker, writer, and idea specialist.
Joining the Disney organization in 1978, Lorraine launched her career as a motion picture and television publicist coordinating the public relations efforts of numerous Disney movies and television shows. After six years, she moved into the theme park arena and assumed the position of Manager of Publicity at Disneyland from 1984 to 1990. Beckoned to Disney Corporate headquarters in 1990, Lorraine was named Director of Corporate Synergy for the entire Walt Disney Company. In that leadership role she coordinated all marketing communications and internal cross-promotions for over 50 diverse Disney businesses - from film and television to home video, consumer products, sports, theatrical productions and theme parks.
Lorraine is also an accomplished writer and journalist having written four books and myriad press releases, feature stories, biographies, film and television story synopses as well as authoring numerous magazine articles. Her most recent book is "Inside the Disney Marketing Machine - in the Era of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells," released in July 2015. She is considered a "Disney Historian" and has particular expertise on the original Mouseketeers and "The Mickey Mouse Club." She has known and worked with the original group for over thirty years.
From 2011 to 2013 Santoli also served as the pro bono Executive Director of The Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases. Today, she works as a freelance writer, PR and marketing consultant, lecturer and speaker. She loves to engage on social media.
Lorraine Santoli, former Director of Corporate Synergy for The Walt Disney Company has established herself as an innovative communicator, creative thinker, writer, and idea specialist.
Joining the Disney organization in 1978, Lorraine launched her career as a motion picture and television publicist coordinating the public relations efforts of numerous Disney movies and television shows. After six years, she moved into the theme park arena and assumed the position of Manager of Publicity at Disneyland from 1984 to 1990. Beckoned to Disney Corporate headquarters in 1990, Lorraine was named Director of Corporate Synergy for the entire Walt Disney Company. In that leadership role she coordinated all marketing communications and internal cross-promotions for over 50 diverse Disney businesses - from film and television to home video, consumer products, sports, theatrical productions and theme parks.
Lorraine is also an accomplished writer and journalist having written four books and myriad press releases, feature stories, biographies, film and television story synopses as well as authoring numerous magazine articles. Her most recent book is "Inside the Disney Marketing Machine - in the Era of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells," released in July 2015. She is considered a "Disney Historian" and has particular expertise on the original Mouseketeers and "The Mickey Mouse Club." She has known and worked with the original group for over thirty years.
From 2011 to 2013 Santoli also served as the pro bono Executive Director of The Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases. Today, she works as a freelance writer, PR and marketing consultant, lecturer and speaker. She loves to engage on social media.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 4, 2016
From BetweenDisney.Com
It has become a family tradition to watch the Disney parade on ABC on Christmas day. During this two hour presentation, viewers see a parade filmed primarily from Walt Disney World on a network owned by Disney with hosts employed by ABC and Disney cable networks which highlights the parks in-between video snippets about Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, Aulani, Disney films, and everything else you can think of made by the mouse. If Synergy, a much maligned work for marketing integration, had a showcase this parade would be it!
Inside the Disney Marketing Machine: In the Era of Michael Eisner & Frank Wells by Lorraine Santoli outlines the author’s experiences within Disney marketing and publicity efforts beginning in 1978. Santoli moved to California planning to be a script writer but finding a very different career in Disney marketing. She would eventually move into the position of manager of Corporate Synergy and Special Projects. In this role she would market Disney to Disney! Santoli would interact with numerous Disney legends including Charlie Ridgeway, Jack Lindquist, Frank Wells and the synergy champion Michael Eisner. Santoli outlines a number of her projects marketing Disney parks and creating synergy experiences. Her synergy discussion provides in-depth detail on how she was able to build and support a highly effective synergy machine.
Overall, I found Inside the Disney Marketing Machine easy to read, enjoyable and helpful. One of the important lessons that one finds in Santoli’s writing is the power of personal relationships within the workplace. It is the relationships that she created throughout Disney including those between others that made synergy work. As a professional, one reads of catered breakfasts and some may think “why do you need to bribe employees to do their job?” Seriously I have heard this complaint in the last month. But really Santoli was creating connections which fostered teamwork through networking, the treats were just the tool. Stronger connections were forged within the company and units were more willing to work with each other. The second part of her dastardly plan was really information sharing. Due to the relationships she had created in the diverse company, key champions would give attention to her targeted messages and best of all act on them. These are key business lessons that we can all learn from; the power of relationship and information. Most professionals can likely reflect on projects that broke down due to a lack of networking and communication. And much of that breakdown is often based on when people do no read and act on messages.
Though as a Cyclone fan I do need to remind everyone that Iowa State University (Go Cyclones!) and the University of Iowa are two very different schools. Of course, I assume only a minority of readers are ISU alumni who take a certain pride in their school’s unique Disney connection! But sadly this reviewer had his cardinal and gold socks on when he read her accounting of the Mickey Mouse cornfield.
Inside the Disney Marketing Machine is an excellent account of the founding of Disney’s highly effective synergy campaign. Santoli teaches readers how to market within a company and the results of increased integration, cooperation and profits. Santoli takes us from the ground up as synergy was created from scratch within Disney. And we can all learn valuable lessons about relationship building from her experience, especially since we can still see synergy’s tremendous results today for Disney. And of course, Disney fans will love looking at the synergy machine from the inside of the mouse.
Review Copy Provided by Theme Park Press
It has become a family tradition to watch the Disney parade on ABC on Christmas day. During this two hour presentation, viewers see a parade filmed primarily from Walt Disney World on a network owned by Disney with hosts employed by ABC and Disney cable networks which highlights the parks in-between video snippets about Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, Aulani, Disney films, and everything else you can think of made by the mouse. If Synergy, a much maligned work for marketing integration, had a showcase this parade would be it!
Inside the Disney Marketing Machine: In the Era of Michael Eisner & Frank Wells by Lorraine Santoli outlines the author’s experiences within Disney marketing and publicity efforts beginning in 1978. Santoli moved to California planning to be a script writer but finding a very different career in Disney marketing. She would eventually move into the position of manager of Corporate Synergy and Special Projects. In this role she would market Disney to Disney! Santoli would interact with numerous Disney legends including Charlie Ridgeway, Jack Lindquist, Frank Wells and the synergy champion Michael Eisner. Santoli outlines a number of her projects marketing Disney parks and creating synergy experiences. Her synergy discussion provides in-depth detail on how she was able to build and support a highly effective synergy machine.
Overall, I found Inside the Disney Marketing Machine easy to read, enjoyable and helpful. One of the important lessons that one finds in Santoli’s writing is the power of personal relationships within the workplace. It is the relationships that she created throughout Disney including those between others that made synergy work. As a professional, one reads of catered breakfasts and some may think “why do you need to bribe employees to do their job?” Seriously I have heard this complaint in the last month. But really Santoli was creating connections which fostered teamwork through networking, the treats were just the tool. Stronger connections were forged within the company and units were more willing to work with each other. The second part of her dastardly plan was really information sharing. Due to the relationships she had created in the diverse company, key champions would give attention to her targeted messages and best of all act on them. These are key business lessons that we can all learn from; the power of relationship and information. Most professionals can likely reflect on projects that broke down due to a lack of networking and communication. And much of that breakdown is often based on when people do no read and act on messages.
Though as a Cyclone fan I do need to remind everyone that Iowa State University (Go Cyclones!) and the University of Iowa are two very different schools. Of course, I assume only a minority of readers are ISU alumni who take a certain pride in their school’s unique Disney connection! But sadly this reviewer had his cardinal and gold socks on when he read her accounting of the Mickey Mouse cornfield.
Inside the Disney Marketing Machine is an excellent account of the founding of Disney’s highly effective synergy campaign. Santoli teaches readers how to market within a company and the results of increased integration, cooperation and profits. Santoli takes us from the ground up as synergy was created from scratch within Disney. And we can all learn valuable lessons about relationship building from her experience, especially since we can still see synergy’s tremendous results today for Disney. And of course, Disney fans will love looking at the synergy machine from the inside of the mouse.
Review Copy Provided by Theme Park Press
July 8, 2016
An interesting look inside Disney's marketing and synergy business back in the 1980s/1990s. The book could have done with another pass by the copy-editor, and towards the end the level of detail about meetings around synergy get a bit, shock-horror, dull. But lots of great trivia and stuff that will help in my research.
January 7, 2020
A fantastic book for those who are Disney and Marketing nerds! I originally picked it up as a book for a university project and have read it again since then.
November 30, 2021
Fun book, nice reminder that marketing has been elevated and changed since the 50s 60s 70s.
May 8, 2022
This book gives a concise and clear picture of the strategy used by Lorraine to tie up with the various different verticals of the vast Disney empire for planning strategies for various events
January 20, 2016
An insider view of how Disney made synergy work in the 1990s
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews