GIVING DISNEYLAND ITS DUE AS A MARKETING SCHOOL

Contents
Dana Point, media megalopolis?

Home Base has some fun with Suissa Miller

The marketing team that Disneyland put together in its early years, has probably spawned more startups than any other company in Orange County history.

For example, last week I had a conversation with Jack Lindquist, Disneyland's original advertising manager, who worked his way up to president before retiring from the park, and now heads up Irvine-based Lindquist Group and Lindquist-Clark. Jack and partner Steve Lewis, another Disney alumnus, have received tons of publicity recently for their Class of 2000 concept that's designed to help corporations celebrate the millennium.

Another phone call came in from former Disneyland marketing guy Billy Long, who heads up Long On Promotions, a marketing company that helped Tustin-based Select Productions International produce the halftime show at last week's Super Bowl. Select itself is run by Dennis Despie, another Disney marketing alumnus.

Such talent was forged in a marketing department that gave new meaning to the word lean. In the first 20 years of the Anaheim park's existence, there were probably never more than 20 staffers.

"We ran so lean that everyone was given a lot of freedom," said Dave Schmidt, another Disney marketing department vet and now a partner at Tustin-based Management Resources, a tourism and entertainment operation and marketing company. "The system was the mentor. It taught each of us to be very entrepreneurial and gave us a real commitment to quality."

A few other Disneyland marketing grads currently running their own marketing companies in Southern California are:
Jim Garber, President of Garber & Associates, a Pasadena-based theme park and tourism consulting firm.
Sandy Quinn, head honcho of the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda.
Bob Baldwin, vice president of corporate marketing of Intergame, an entertainment software company that provides video gaming programs for airlines, cruise ships, and hotels.
Rich Irvine, president of Mikohn Gaming, a Las Vegas-based gaming supply company.
George Mcintyre, executive with Dreamcycles, a collectors' merchandise direct marketing company in Corona.
Tom Sharrit, president of San Diegobased Partners In Learning, a major university fundraising firm.
Mike Leone of San Juan Capistranobased Leone & Leone, a public relations and promotions agency specializing in tourism and retail accounts.
Ron Yeakley, president of Yeakley Marketing & Media, which oversees marketing efforts for Medieval Times and Catalina Express.
Ed Beaver, general manager at Buena Park's Wild Bill's dinner show.
Jim Jalet, President of Irvine-based JNR Travel, an incentive and group travel company.
Bob Roth, vice president of Irvine-based Perri Productions, a video news service producer and distributor.

This is just a brief sampling of the early Disney marketing mavens currently in circulation in Southern California. What's fascinating to me is that every one of the Disneyland graduates I spoke to had the same infectious entrepreneurial attitude about their businesses: "Let's have some fun and make some money." And I got the distinct impression that the fun is at least as important to them as the money.

Was Walt Disney the greatest judge of marketing talent the world has ever known? Or was he the greatest teacher of marketing the world has ever known? Or both?

No one at Irvine-based home improvement chain HomeBase took a dim view when their agency, Suissa Miller in Santa Monica, made national headlines with its win of American Honda's $125 million Acura account. Quite the opposite, says Suissa Miller principal Bruce Miller, who walked into a meeting at HomeBase's Michelson Drive offices shortly after the Acura win to find HomeBase staffers had decorated the conference room in a auto motif: Print ads reading "Go to the car dealer, the Acura dealer," were on the walls, a play on the Home Base tag line.

Fun aside, it appears Suissa Miller is taking care of business on the HomeBase account, estimated in the $10 million to $20 million range. Within weeks after winning Acura, both Miller and partner David Suissa had been to Irvine a half dozen times.