Yesterday we told you that Disney was experiencing its particular earthquake before after it Bob Iger has returned to the company to fill the position of CEO which he already held three years ago, unseating Bob Chapek from the position of chief executive. A day later, with the foundations of the company still reeling, this crown change has already been paid his first victim.
creativity to power
This has been none other than Kareem Daniel, one of Chapek’s trusted men who held the position of director of the Media and Entertainment Distribution division. The decision to part with Daniel, as announced by Iger in a statement to his employees, is part of a plan to design “a new structure that puts decision-making in the hands of creative teams and rationalizes costs”; and is that Iger has already declared restructure things “in a way that honors and respects creativity as the heart and soul of who we are”.
To create said structure, the new CEO has placed his trust in Dana Walden, Alan Bergman, Jimmy Pitaro and Christine McCarthy, who will have among their objectives “reorganize” the Media and Entertainment Distribution department; responsible, among other things, for the distribution and sale of advertising space on Disney platforms, and which suffered losses of 1.5 billion dollars in the last quarter of the fiscal year.
It is precisely the strategy when it comes to prioritizing the distribution of content and benefits over creativity the biggest difference between the administrations of Iger and Chapek. The current CEO already declared in 2021 that “In a world and a business that is inundated with data, it is tempting to use it to answer all our questions, including the creative ones”urging “don’t do it”.
The discrepancies between the two CEOs are also reflected in his point of view on streaming service pricing plans offered by Disney. While Iger’s plan has always been to ramp up with amounts around $1 per year for each month of subscription, Chapek opted for the $3 straight increase to maximize profits from subscriber growth.
It seems that the landing of Bob Iger at Disney is going to translate into a more creative Mouse House and less dependent on algorithmsspreadsheets and formula books and, ultimately, the big beneficiaries of this are none other than consumers.