Time Warner Inc. vs The Walt Disney Company

Social Media & Social Networks Project The University of Manchester Created by: Adrian Preda Elizabeth Lee Clotilde Le Bour

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Individual Reflection: Adrian Preda

            << We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths - Walt Disney. >> As the parent of Mickey Mouse stated in his mid-ages, curiosity is the key for opening new paths. In our era, the phenomenon of social media gathers a significant amount of curiosity. Even if it is still under development, the social media channels currently connect an important percentage of the population of the globe throughout the internet.

            Moreover, we are witnesses of the tech evolution which brings the social media channels even closer to our life, through smartphones, watches, laptops and other gadgets. We expect that the cloud synchronisation of these devices will be even more improved in the next 10 years, judging upon the latest acquisitions of the big social media players. Facebook for example acquired in March, 2014 the Oculus VR Company, which is the leader in virtual reality technology while Google has announced plans to buy thermostat maker Nest Labs. So, we can expect that the social media environment will feel more ‘real’ and close to our personal lives, while it will definitely be more affordable and accessible for every human being in the following period.

            To conclude, if at the moment, most of the social media platforms are key ingredients towards a more sociable lifestyle, they will certainly change their role in the future, and will represent the proof of existence of each of us!

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Individual Reflection: Elizabeth Lee

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and etc. have enhanced the sharing of information and communication between various companies and their customers. Time Warner and Disney both have embraced the use of social media for various functions that are aimed at establishing direct communication with the target audience and deriving important feedback about their products and services.

“The essence of Social Media is knowing your audiences and engaging them in something they love.” The reason as to why it is such a lucrative platform for marketing is because our data is held and our interests are shared. Companies take advantage of this by using this data to suit advertisements to our interests. But the downside is, is that what we really want? The question of privacy still arises but yet the growth of Social media however, is still inevitable. Also, we may not appreciate content as much if it was on SM since its so easily accessible, it also discounts the value of the content.

Disney and Time Warner are both in the media industry and therefore they could heavily take advantage of SM. I believe that in the future, Time Warner and Disney would take after the likes of recommendations (eg. Spotify) for movies via Facebook and also stream their movies on these networking platforms for convenience. Moving on to reconstruction of advertisements, recognition of individuals and their preferences can evolve to the greatest marketing tool ever by maybe changing the advertisement ranging from who the target is.

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Individual Reflection: Clotilde Le Bour

A few years ago, when a number of beauty and fashion blogs flourished on the Internet, they were hardly recognized as credible or significant. Now, blogs have evolved to vlogs, and their most influential authors are treated like celebrities. Indeed, they are invited to brand presentations on the other side of the world, such as for the Armin van Buuren and Phillips headphones launch in Miami, and there are even conventions specifically dedicated to this sector like VidCon in Florida or Digifest in London. Furthermore, by showing and demonstrating the use of products on a daily basis on their social media platforms, these influencers promote them; engaging the audience and ultimately encouraging people the buy these products.

Therefore, this example goes to show the importance of social media in our society today. Indeed, social media has the power to reach millions of people like no other industry or organisation can, thus its power is immense and will only increase in the future, with new platforms and technologies emerging. The impact social media can have, either positive or negative, is also the reason why you will rarely find a company nowadays absent from all platforms. It has not only become an advantage, it is now a requirement for firms to have at least a Facebook and Twitter account if they wish to attract new customers, engage with the public on a daily and more approachable basis, as well as promote their products to a larger audience.

Thus, I believe that the future impact of social media on our society is, and will be tremendous. In fact, sometimes we do not even realize its presence, even though we act out of its influence. 

[disney]

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Disney, whose actual name is The Walt Disney Company was founded on October 1923 in Burbank, California, under the name Disney Brothers Studios. Both companies are multinational mass media corporations, however Time Warner was created much later, in 1990. Further, Disney is the largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue and Time Warner the second, thus they are direct competitors. 

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Overview of Disney and Time Warner

Disney is best known for its films, for instance, Frozen just won an Oscar for the track “Let It Go” and Time Warner possesses some incredibly famous TV shows such as Game of Thrones. 

However, Disney also has a vast array of broadcast, radio, publishing and many more businesses across two divisions: the Disney and ABC group, and ESPN Inc. The own as well eleven theme parks across the world and the CEO at this day is Robert A. Iger.

On the other hand Time Warner’s CEO is Jeff Bewkes and they are far from being left out, with major operations in film, television and publishing. Time Warner was at first two separate companies: Warner Communications Inc. and Time Inc.

Therefore, it is undeniable that both companies are extremely successful at the moment and will continue to be with such assets.

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Why do they use Social Media?

Social media is a great way to connect with people so that they are able to create engagement, spread information and share products. Therefore, companies are able to get more visibility and obtain feedback as well as recommendations. Further, what is so special about social media as well as quite revolutionary is that any company, no matter its size can do it.

Yet, they have to accept the “small risk” that they are taking; indeed, social media allows the audience to say whatever they want without censorship, whether it is positive or negative.

On the positive side, with such big organisations people will always defend the company on social media when there are negative comments, without the company actually having to do anything.

Therefore, overall it is an opportunity for firms to grow and ensure that consumers will be talking and passing on relevant information to friends, family and peers.

[wifflegif]

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One of Time Warner's most successful TV show: Mad Men.

[gameraboy]

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The magic of Disney, created by the Disney brothers.

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« Social media lets you uniquely connect with fans. »

Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products 

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How do these big firms manage their social media accounts?

SEO Optimization tools that makes their pages easier to find on search engines is one of them. Moreover, Social Management Software helps them to post simultaneously on each page and can track the performance. Another useful tool is the Ad Statistics Software that tracks all their social media campaigns and provides data to assess the performance of their ads. Last but not least, the computer can’t do all the magic, thus some brilliant ideas are needed in order to make the difference!

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What does Time Warner actually mean?

Let’s turn our attention towards Time Warner for a second. They believe that in a few years all television content will be available on the Internet (Levine, 2011). Their approach is quite different from Disney’s, focusing on building individual brands instead of the family brand technique. Let me ask you a question: Does anyone know what Time Warner actually mean? Let’s see if you are familiar with these particular names: HBO, DC, Game of Thrones, CNN Money, Warner Bros, Fortune 500. Do they ring you a bell? Yep, they are all Time Warner’s Assets. Each of them creates their own social media rumour and fans, on each social media platform. HBO for example has its own social platform called HBO Connect where people can sign up and discuss their favourite TV Shows or films. 

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Disney between fairytales and marketing

Disney's way of doing marketing as an art can be noticed when looking at their impressive social media statistics.A company called Dachis group wanted to find how popular Disney is and came up with the following data in the late 2013: Over 1000 accounts all over social media? WOW! This is something. But, it gets even better. 3.4 million unique individuals visiting their content and 5.7 million shares counted in September 2013. Plus, they are active 24 hour per day. Looking at all these figures we can ask a solid question: Is the whole world watching Disney? The answer is yes! Social media Disney runs an excellent Pinterest page. It has a Disney Princesses board, and it’s absolutely stuffed with pins from across the Magic Kingdom. But the most successful board that Disney operates on Pinterest is the Disney Delicious board which presents fabulous food recipes. Disney also features in the best branded Vines and their Instagram is full of exclusive and attractive content that users won’t find anywhere else. If we speak of YouTube, it’s a delicate balance for Disney to get it right. As a business you don’t necessarily want to give away your best content for free. So, how does Disney succeed in this? By creating exclusive original content for the channel, for example how-to beauty guides. Disney reached 400 million cumulative likes on Facebook over their 267 pages. On Twitter, the company gathered through their accounts a sum of 3.5 million followers. But even Disney’s numbers across Facebook, Twitter and Google + are fascinating, some of the social media specialist say that the only failing in Disney’s social media strategy is right here, within its more direct one-to-one channels. Although each channel provides great and regular content, each one is used identically to the other. There is no reason why you would follow them all, therefore splitting your possible audience between all three. It becomes very tiresome receiving the same broadcast message from the same brand across multiple channels and it results in negative feelings towards a brand and a swift unfollow.

[mickeyandcompany]

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Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American business magnate, animator, cartoonist, producer, director, screenwriter, philanthropist and voice actor.

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A preview of the sing-along version of Disney's award winning "Frozen"

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Time Warner’s Celebrity Endorsements

Time warner cable has signed a deal with popular hip-hop artist Sean Diddy Combs to showcase a new an interactive music channel called Revolt TV. The new venture has attracted massive social media interest and has received positive support from fans across all major social networking sites. The move demonstrates the company’s effective use of social media to promote new products and services.

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Who performs best on social media?

Let’s do a short recap about Disney:

Across all its Facebook pages, the Walt Disney Company has achieved to reach more than 300 millions likes; and the Disney page alone counts 46 millions likes. Moreover, their Twitter page has 3,58 millions followers, and their Disney YouTube account alone has more than 8 billions views.

 How have they managed to achieve that? By creating a community, rather than focusing on product promotion. They promote their brand and reach to people through engaging content.

 For instance, on the Walt Disney Animated Studios YouTube channel, they offer extended or deleted movie scenes, exclusive footages and interviews from producers and actors to their subscribers. It is extremely valuable material to fans and has more than 425 millions views.

 Therefore, their channels are entirely dedicated to fans, and rely on emotion rather than promotion.

 Indeed, among their multiple YouTube channels they also possess a moms channel, a Disney Style channel etc. On Disney Style, they offer makeup and hair tutorials that imitate the heroes in the movies, and they use celebrity YouTubers to make their content even more attractive to their target market.

 Thus, they use targeted and marketed social media platforms to reach to one particular audience and offer content that is truly interesting to them, instead of publishing the same content for everyone.

 Disney has a clear vision and brand identity across all social media platforms.

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Time Warner Social Care

Time Warner cares about what customers want and thinks. Therefore, the company has set up a Social Care Team that is tasked with the responsibility of repairing the effects of negative publicity created through social media. The service deals with various problems encountered by customers and has been assigned to both the company’s twitter handle and its Facebook page. This initiative has seen a reduction in the number of negative comments and encouraged positive customer response that in turn attracts new consumers. The company has gained over 8000 followers on twitter and has received a 75% response rate. The firm has employed the services of 360i to handle its social media campaigns. The move was necessitated by the increased competition from rival brand Netflix that announced plans to integrate its services with Facebook.