Walt Disney’s initial experience and expertise was in making cartoons, and although he created Disneyland, he was not trained as a theme park designer, social architect, or civil engineer. But he was a creative visionary, a soulful leader, and dreamer who challenged his teams to stretch towards new forms of entertainment, creating in the process an entertainment brand unlike anything the world had ever seen.
Disney’s vision was his personal quest to create fantasy worlds that make people happy by entertaining them in a fun, compelling and heartfelt way. To this end he developed characters with pathos or heart so audiences would develop a deep interest in the dramatic outcome of his stories.
The Bond Between Heart And Story
Today, science now backs Disney’s and marketing’s case that storytelling from the heart is powerful. Enter the HeartMath Institute, a non-profit organization whose objective is to help the development of heart-brain-coherence has been exploring the role of the heart’s intelligence in guiding people, organizations and medicine in understanding human nature and human potential for the past 25 years. Their work has proven that the heart, like the brain, generates a powerful electromagnetic field. HeartMath Institute Director of Research Rollin McCraty explains in The Coherent Heart that “The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body. The electrical field as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG).” The communicative energy within our hearts is real. We know it. We’ve felt it. We’ve seen how it affects ourselves and those around us. Walt had an intuitive understanding of the need for putting heart intelligence in his stories and this was one of the hidden sources of his genius.
A Culture Of Meaning, A Culture Of Story
After many years of putting pathos in cartoons Walt came to understand that he wanted his company and trademark to become known as “The Premiere Storytelling Entertainer, “ and he never lost sight of heart intelligence which was at the center of his brand of entertainment as it expanded and evolved over many decades.
Walt Disney, the brand visionary, created a compelling future for his company and for the entire entertainment industry by guarding and guiding what ‘Walt Disney Presents’ would come to mean in defining his unique brand of entertainment. It was these storytelling skills that inspired people to join him in fulfilling his dreams.
The Disney organization created many other technical innovations in storytelling and film production, which included new animation techniques to achieve greater realism; a unique artistic style and storytelling ingenuity through the invention of storyboards; stop motion photography as an aid to animation, and the Disney studio was the first to match sound to movies.
He established artistic quality standards and a scientific approach to animation, and created a new university to teach those techniques. The Disney organization invented Technicolor so cartoons could be seen in color, and invented countless wonderful stories and characters, all toward the end of making people happy through the conveyance of heart intelligent wisdom.
About twenty-five years after he founded Walt Disney Studios Disney realized that he needed to diversify the company, and his search for inspiration took him all over the world. Disneyland itself was largely inspired by Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, and through his studies he gradually came to understand that his goal was “to create a living, ever-changing entertainment.” Later, while on a South American goodwill tour during World War II he found the inspiration for the Disneyland feature rides Pirates of the Caribbean, the Jungle Cruise, and the Tiki Room, and his personal fascination and hobby with quarter-scale model trains also led to several theme park rides.
Story Above All Else
A few days before Walt Disney died in December 1966 he summoned a small group of Disney animators to his bedside. His last piece of advice was this, “Get the story right. The story’s the most important thing. Once you’ve got the story then everything else will fall into place.”
As our world and the world of brands and branding become more digital and technical very important questions emerge: “What is our brand story? Where is the heart intelligence in our story?” It doesn’t really matter what media you are using these are fundamental questions related to service and engagement that marketers should be asking themselves.
“If I can’t find a theme, I can’t make a film anyone else will feel. I can’t laugh at intellectual humor. I’m just corny enough to like to have a story hit me over the heart…” – Walt Disney
Learn more about heart intelligence in Soulful Branding – Unlock The Hidden Energy in Your Company & Brand
The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education
