There is much debate in the "media" about Disney's next "CEO" now that Eisner has announced he's going to "retire". Some have speculated that Terry Semel will take the job while others have snorted that he already runs a much more interesting media company. Yet others have pointed to former Eisner protoges like Jeffy Katzenburg at Dreamworks SKG (sign above his desk: "I'm the K in SKG! Ask me about my partners!" Kind of a stupid sign if you think about it). Finally, inevitably, inexorably, those in the know have started a whisper campaign for the best and most sensible choice for Disney CEO: Me.
Here is what I would do if I were CEO of Disney, in the following order:
1. Buy Pixar. Day 1, I tell my M&A team, "nobody eats until we own pixar". The fact that Pixar is not part of Disney should be Eisner's greatest worry. To think that Disney has even been ruffling feathers and playing hardball in licensing arrangements with Pixar is mind wobbling. Disney must own Pixar if it wants to be a dominant force in global media going forward. In fact, on day 1 I would change the name of the company to Pixare in order to make it pretty much a requirement that we buy pixar.
2. Begin immediate construction on the "It's fun to be Dick Costolo" DisneyWorld ride. Let's face it, I'm not yet well known outside of FB, and a lot of people will want answers to very pointed questions. Some of those people won't speak english, and some of them will be reporters. I have a hard time with both groups. Therefore, instead of giving interviews, we will encourage these folks to spend a couple of days riding and re-queuing for "It's fun to be Dick Costolo". For those of you who haven't been to DisneyWorld, you will be shocked to hear that you can't actually go into that big castle in the center of the park. Can you believe that? So, down comes that underused stage prop and up goes "It's fun to be Dick Costolo".
3. Infoseek, Go.com, Disney Blast, it’s one train wreck after another at Disney online. That needs to change now. My six year old daughter would sooner shove pickles up her nose (more on this later) than she would play a game, read a story, or do a homework project via Disney.com. How is this possible? Disney should own my daughter’s attention. She loved Disney World, she wants to go back.
"Why do you want to go back?" I ask
"Cuz" she says
"Cuz is a sucky reason", I say
"Mom! Daddy said 'sucky' again!", she says
"I'm not buying you a birthday present", I say.
Anyway, I strayed off topic. The Disney.com site has no idea what it wants to be. It’s a portal, it’s a games site, it’s a corporate overview, it’s a map of the company, it’s for parents, it’s for kids, it’s a total disaster. This site should be a vast money pit for Disney, generating untold billions from the hours of endless edutainment children could experience therein. Instead they have some very lame games that appear to have been coded as exercises for paid inclusion in “Visual Basic for Dummies”, banner ads for marketing surveys on the front page (this to me is hilarious....crummy banner ads on the disney.com front page), and something called Disney ToonTown that “doesn’t work in your browser”. Kill me now. So, here’s what we’ll do. Every morning,I will walk into the floor or floors or building that runs Disney.com and I will stand under a big banner that will read “Kill me now”. The banner will stay up there until I don’t feel like bashing my head against the keyboard when I or my daughter attempt to use Disney.com. I will stand under the banner for ten minutes every morning, in an attempt to humiliate the employees into creating a better user experience. If this fails, I will outsource the redesign of disney.com to craigslist.
4. That guy who was put on trial for groping people in the goofy suit should only be allowed to put on the Minnie mouse suit. People like it when Minnie mouse touches them and we’d thus avoid further legal action. If the guy looks as much like steve buscemi as he does in his perp photos, we should fire him because steve buscemi is a little too creepy. Remember in Con Air when he played dolls with that little girl? . You can’t have that guy working in a theme park dressed up as a cartoon.
5. Find and burn all known recordings of “It’s a small world after all”. Keep the ride, but replace the soundtrack with live audio translations of whatever people around the world are searching for now on Google, unfiltered. This will ultimately deliver the same message as “it’s a small world”, but in a much more thorough and visceral way.
I have a lot of other ideas, but I don't want to issue too many forward looking statements in advance of my appointment.
Posted by Dick at October 18, 2004 05:18 PM | TrackBack