Business Strategy

Change Management 752

Lasell University

Shiv Kapur

09/22/19

Marvel is an American media franchise and shared universe centered on a series of

superhero films produced by marvel studios and based on characters that appear in comic books.

The franchise also includes comic books, short films, television series, and digital series. They

suffered deep debt and eventually bankruptcy, before the buyout of 4.2 billion dollars. Founded

in 1939, by Martin Goodman, Marvel struggled in a red ocean strategy with its basic product that

comprised of me-too knock-off comic books. During the early 60’s, the company adopted the

blue ocean strategy, and the company thrived by targeting non-customers who mainly comprised

of college students. It created characters that were people oriented with the concept of

superheroes coming second, with some of its best characters including, Iron Man, The Hulk,

Spider-Men, and the X-Men.

In 1980, red ocean value extractors then gained control and made a terrible misalignment

of the company’s management practices, forcing it to file for bankruptcy in 1996. Isaac

Perlmutter then bought the company on over 30 million-dollar loan. The challenge was so

daunting, considering that at times, the company almost skipped payrolls, and their film rights,

the licenses of a number of their best characters were given to competitors.

Peter Cuneo, who was made CEO resuscitated and stabilized the company by changing

the business practice from red ocean and re-adopting the blue ocean strategy. This approach that

always comprised upholding unyielding investment practices that did not support movie making.

By this, Cuneo did away with the Hollywood tradition that involved spending for glam reasons

because it did not support movie making. The company also restored its original idea of

designing characters that are people first and superhero second. Cuneo also dropped the concept

of utilizing familiar talent of incorporating actors to play the same character but in different

films. He therefore decided to drop actors and instead decided to use characters who would still

assume positions of superhero’s, making the process less expensive. To achieve this, the CEO

put together a relatively expensive Creative Committee that was tasked with designing the films

to involving comic book editors and company executives who were to uphold the honesty and

integrity of their characters as well as coming up with a solid story line that was non reliant on

the participators.

This idea, as per the blue ocean strategy, comprises the theory of an augmented value at a

lower cost, which is relatively known as the cost/value trade off. So, what exactly, happened?

The table below will help to elucidate the blue ocean strategy as employed by Marvel.

Eliminate

Raise

-Unnecessary expenses on glamour

-Actors and actresses

- Narration

Reduce

Create

-Familiar talent

-Middle management

-Unique characters

-Creative committee

-Solid storyline

The blue ocean strategy is made up of four concepts. At the elimination stage, the company does

away with activities of aspects that the industry does not take seriously. These involve elements

that can easily be cut out of the process and allow the business to run its activities without

disruption that would lead to financial losses. The raise concept involves adding activities that

would add the value or standards of the practice. In many occasions, these activities involve

those, which the industry fails to consider. The reduce concept involves considering factors that

the company would raise above the standards upheld by the industry, while the create option

gives the business the opportunity to think about factors that the industry has never thought of

before.

References

- Blue Ocean Strategy, KIM, W. Chan, MAUBORGNE, Renée, OLENICK, Michael

- The Marvel Way: Restoring a Blue Ocean

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Cinematic_Universe - https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/teaching-materials/marvel/