Disney now accounts, according to The Hollywood Reporter, for 45 % of all movie tickets sold in 2019 and has exceeded the record for annual box office revenue, making 7.67 billion; and it’s only July. By comparison, the next most successful studio, Warner Brothers’, has made only $2 billion in the same time period. For Disney, this is a truly astounding feat and Disney CEO Bob Iger deserves much of the credit for this unheard-of feat.

I was one of the managers in the audience shortly after Bob became Disney CEO and remember an experience he related and the strategy he articulated as a result of that experience. He described watching one of the Disney park’s daily parades. He noticed that, as the characters paraded by, all the older characters were Disney ones and all the new characters were Pixar’s. At that point in time, Disney owned the Pixar characters but not Pixar itself. A feud had, in fact, begun under prior CEO Michael Eisner and Pixar was now slated to leave the Disney fold.

What Bob described to us was the insight that characters are the core of Disney. When people connect with a character, they seek opportunities to experience that connection again and again. That desire leads to more movies and television shows, theme park attractions, merchandise and all sorts of auxiliary revenue opportunities.

Bob said he saw his, and the company’s, main focus as protecting and utilizing the characters the company had and developing more “IP” (intellectual property) that could fuel additiona, connections.

Bob then bought Pixar and put Pixar in charge of revitalizing the moribund Disney Animation Studios. Next he bought Marvel; and Lucas Films; and Fox. The result is a powerhouse company who owns many of the characters that people love. Some examples include the traditional Disney characters, the Marvel Superheroes, the Star Wars characters, Indiana Jones, Avatar, and many, many more.

But, so what? You don’t own a movie studio. But you do own, or deliver, a product that people hopefully purchase. The challenge is to know what the core of your business really is and to focus all your energies on highlighting and enhancing the emotion behind that core product or experience. If you do that, you too might have a record-breaking box office year.