Marvel-ous Planning
A business’s strategy should take a long view of the general direction that the company is moving. The plan should have a strong general direction but at the same time be flexible enough to adapt for changes that can not be known at the inception of the plan. You have likely heard the analogy to an airplane flight used in terms of planning. An airplane is off course most of the flight. A plane is not on the exact path that it should be travelling as much as 50 percent of the flight. Despite that, planes almost always land in close approximation to the correct time and at the correct airport. It is the rare problem that causes some great variance from the standard landing. Ultimately, the destination is the plan. The success frequency is due to a strong plan and regular course corrections during the trip.
This is no different than a business executing its plan. It is generally off course and it is up to the owners, executives, managers, and employees to make sure it is regularly nudged safely back on course. In this respect, a company is just like that plane ride and constant corrections can result in impressive results. The plan is the plotted course, and the plan will identify the general direction the company should be moving toward.
One shining example of such planning today is that of Marvel Entertainment (formerly Marvel Comics), a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Marvel Comics was founded in 1939 as Timely Publications and became Marvel Comics in 1961. And while most people older than 20 will know the company as a comic book publisher, future generations will know them primarily as a movie studio. The company has successfully transformed itself into a movie making machine and their approach is actually changing the industry. This is due to their vision and strategy. These have propelled them to the height of success today, and the company has not even scratched the surface of what it may accomplish.
Specifically, Marvel has a long-view plan of how they intend to build their movie schedule and it is really an excellent example of how long-term business planning should be done. Because of Marvel’s history as a comic book company it has a stable of characters that is rich with opportunity. Though the days of paper-based comic book sales are largely in the past, the intrinsic value of these character-driven properties has never been greater. With thousands of well-developed characters, the company began years ago moving from a print-based business into other ventures and the eventually into a movie manufacturing machine. Several years ago, Marvel began developing a plan on how to maximize the value of these characters on the big screen and with that plan hitting full stride today they continue to develop the plan to the point that they have a rough draft of what they want to develop far into the future. .
Most people and organizations have a difficult time planning more than a few days in advance. But the entertainment company has a plan to produce movies that currently stretches through 2028. Like that airplane flight, they have release dates scheduled three years in advance and generally know the mix of movies they will be releasing five years into the future. Thus, they have effectively announced their destination. The plane took off in 2008 with the release of Iron Man, so as it stands now Marvel is in the midst of a twenty year flight.
To date, the company has produced nine interconnecting movies in five different character franchises with a tenth movie featuring a sixth franchise to be released in the summer of 2014. Thus far, these movies have tied together in the Avengers franchise, but also stand alone in their own series. This has been a slow progression for the company, but now that the company has had successes, they are able to take risks with lesser known properties like the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy. They slowly fight to gain ground, spend a little time settling on a plateau, and then thrust forward with a new venture. A truly valuable lesson for any business.
The Marvel experiment has forever changed how companies think about movies. Its parent Disney hopes to recreate this “magic” with another of its recent acquisitions: Star Wars. And now Warner Brothers, Fox, and Sony are planning the same tactic with their licensed lines. It is not often that a single player can change the whole dynamic of an industry, especially one so complex as the movie entertainment industry.
The Importance of a Vision
Announcing plans to release movies over the next fourteen years may not seem like a major commitment to the casual observer, but consider that each movie unto itself is a huge undertaking and the magnitude of what Marvel has pulled off thus far comes into focus. Consider the resources required to make one movie, and then sprinkle in the need to retain valuable talent like Robert Downey, Jr. While this may not seem like a big deal from a planning standpoint, small hiccups can become big problems when you are concerned about the consistency of the product. Getting an actor to replace some like Downey just would not do. This is where the plan must have a strong vision and be ready for course corrections.
The plan is much bigger than any individual piece, but the plan is strong because of the individual pieces. With strong planning, Marvel has already started developing concepts that will allow them to fill in the gaps when major stars leave their respective franchises.
The planning aspect is critical when thinking about tackling monumental problems like retaining key actors. How can the actions of Marvel be relevant to another business? The “best practice” is simple. It is the vision. The vision that Marvel has for its movies is to create a universe of interconnected movies that creates a self-propagating means of growth. Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, is largely regarded as the architect of Marvel’s grand strategy.
One article points out Disney’s acquisition of Marvel in 2009 was considered less than stellar because of Marvel’s previous lack of planning. Marvel had sold the rights to some of its marquee characters to other studios like Fox and Sony many years earlier, and thus could not control how those other studios managed the creative process. The pain experienced in the 1990s and the early 2000s would serve as Marvel’s basis for creating its own studio in the mid-2000s and thus retaining the creative control of the characters it owned. Disney recognized opportunity in this planning redesign and pursued Marvel. The vision was born for Marvel to control the quality of the way the characters would be presented on screen.
Marvel under Feige had decided to very purposefully and intricately “link” their movies together. They teased future movie endeavors by offering a teaser scene at the end of each movie that links it in some way to another part of the Marvel Movie Universe. Fans wait for these nuggets and sometimes look with as much anticipation to these future hints as they do for the movie they came to see. The end of every movie has had a small link to another one of the movies. The plan is always moving forward.
In other cases, there are large instances of characters crossing over between movies. Two characters have had significant roles in Iron Man 2, Avengers, and Captain America 2. As the overarching story progresses, more and more links are created. Captain America 2 had several such links to future events and other franchises revealed in the movie. This is part of the slow-simmer growth that creates texture to the overall body of work the company is building.
The planning involved in Marvel’s undertaking is monumental, but so is the payoff. Currently, the studio is producing two to three movies per year and may increase that rate in the future. At that pace, the studio will have produced somewhere between forty and fifty movies by 2028. And of course by that time, the plan will be extended out to 2050 and beyond. The three Iron Man movies have grossed over $1 billion. The first Avengers movie grossed over $600 million. If this trend continues and Marvel can manage to average $500 million per movie, that will constitute a valuation that could approach $1 trillion in movie receipts from the inception of the plan in 2008 with the release of Iron Man to its currently planned 2028 releases. And that does not account for income coming from other merchandising sources.
Applying the Vision
While it may seem difficult to relate the Marvel movie scenario to another business, it really is quite simple. The ultimate takeaway from the way Marvel has structured their movie universe is that the vision is a rough draft of the next fourteen years. While no one outside the studio knows the intimate details, Marvel has created a breakdown of their vision called “phases”. They are currently in the midst of Phase 2 and have Phase 3 largely fleshed out. That takes them out through approximately 2016. Each phase is roughly connected and contains a small cell of activity consisting of several movies. Generally, Marvel is executing in one phase and planning ahead one phase.
Another key takeaway from Marvel’s vision is that success does not occur overnight. It takes a long time to get all of the pieces in place that will lead to success in any phase of the plan and often there are failures along the way. Long before developing its current plan Marvel sold away its rights to characters considered among its best and most popular. The Spider-Man and X-Men franchises are controlled by Sony and Fox respectively. In retrospect that was an error, but Marvel persevered and through intricate planning turned some of their less popular characters into household names.
Additionally, no matter how much planning a company does, at some point they must acquiesce that some products are not meant to be successful. Prior to implementing the plan a Hulk movie was released in 2003 that was not a box office success. After the implementation of the plan a second Hulk movie was released (the second of the current nine movies) which also resulted in a lackluster result. For now, Marvel realizes that a Hulk movie is not a good bet. For now they have to accept that character as a complementary piece in other movies.
The primary lesson in looking at Marvel is that first and foremost you must have a plan, but equally important is that every activity, whether small or large, should be building for the future. They must “click” into the overall vision. This is absolutely applicable in every business. Actions today, however small, should be building for a larger future. They should be adding texture to what the business already is and also at the same time what the business strives to become. Activities not related, should be corrected, much like what Marvel does when necessary.
A final lesson concerns how a business addresses the loss of key players? Generally they do not. But Marvel does prepare for the that. They have it covered as part of the overarching plan. The actors playing their two arguably most popular characters – Iron Man and Captain America – have already declared they will leave after a few more movies. Early indications are that Marvel will not replace them with other actors. They appear to have a more realistic plan which seems to be to retire those characters which they can do easily because they will continue to introduce new characters and have less reliance on the earlier introductions. How many businesses tackle the problem of lost personnel years in advance of their departure?
Changing the Landscape
A well developed vision leads to success. Success breeds competition. Competition fires up entrepreneurialism. And the landscape changes. As the Marvel machine builds steam it has become willing to take gambles in the cinematic arena. As an example, the Captain America 2 release in April 2014 changed a long standing paradigm on the part of movie makers. As the largest ever grossing movie ever with an April release, movie makers will now consider placing their new releases in April. April has never been a popular month for releasing movies, but Marvel’s success will have other studios rethink that tactic. Why face continual competition in the summer when you can stand atop the market alone in April?
Additionally, the effectiveness of a good plan is very evident when comparing the success of Marvel’s approach with that of its key rival DC Comics, a Warner Brothers owned subsidiary. Warner Brothers / DC has a similar stable of characters that they can mimic this strategy with. However, Disney / Marvel have pulled it off so well that few think Warner Brothers with its DC Comics characters can pull it off. DC offers huge superhero names like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. But Marvel has been so efficient that DC has already once postponed their next Batman & Superman movie, a sequel to Man of Steel in 2013. Marvel is so good that DC has to act cautiously so as not to destroy customer and market confidence.
DC claims a similar strategy, but their activities are not so clear. The vision clearly is lacking the crispness of the Marvel strategy, which it should since Marvel has an almost decade head start and countless victories to showcase. Until this point, DC hero movies have been standalone in nature. The last successful outing was the Christian Bale Batman trilogy which was successful in its own right, but has now been discontinued. Because of a lack of strategy DC has to “reboot” their characters with each iteration. There was a Superman movie in 2006, but not tied to the 2013 series.
DC in comparison to Marvel looks to be in disarray. There is no doubt that Warner Brothers has the resources to duplicate the Marvel strategy, and the success is almost guaranteed to be similar if the quality is even just “good”. The point is that with a well developed vision, refined by the rigors of time, experience, past failure and success, Marvel will be able to execute much more smoothly than DC in the coming years. Eventually, if DC creates a clear vision and sticks to it by aligning their activities and character properties, they should prove to be successful as well.
And of course successful breakthroughs result in emulation not just from outside an organization, but sometimes from within as well. DC following Marvel’s lead is a no-brainer. But another interesting trend has developed. Sony, who released the first X-Men movie in 2000 (remember, another set of Marvel characters), has now mapped out the next few years’ of X-Men movieswith several spinoffs in the works. Sony is doing the same with Spider-Man(again, another of those Marvel characters). And finally, Marvel parent Disney purchased the Star Wars franchise in 2012 for $4 billion. Some initially thought this was an overpayment, but looking at the potential return of the Marvel Universe movies, Disney may recoup this investment in a handful of movies in this well established universe. Not only will the market win from Marvel’s vision due to increased and improved competition, but Disney will win over and over through those successful movie releases of the characters it controls directly and those it licenses to other production companies. Disney stands to gain significantly from a Marvel-ous plan.
