November 7, 2007
Michael Eisner on the illusion of online revenues
To the Media and Money conference (sponsored by our rival Dow Jones & Co but they invited me anyway) in Manhattan to hear Michael Eisner, the former chief executive of Walt Disney, expound on various topics including the "stupidity" of the Hollywood writers’ strike.
"They are misguided - they should not have gone out on strike. This is a stupid strike," he declared, arguing that the revenues from online streaming and downloading of film and television shows are not yet large enough to bother about.
I thought he made a decent point about the fix that studios are now in. They have proudly announced lots of online initiatives in order to convince investors that they are adapting to the new world, and have been caught by writers wanting a piece of the action. But actually, there is not much action in financial terms, compared with revenues from traditional forms of distribution.
Apart from that, he was most interesting on the topic of branding and what he had learned from Warren Buffett on the subject. Mr Buffett, he said, had compared a great brand such as Coca-Cola or Disney to a pointillist painting. You had to focus on making every dot (or product) beautiful and then the painting (or brand) would be beautiful too.
