Kay Kamen ripped the lining out of his coat and spread the money across the table.
“If you hire me,” he said, “all this money is yours. I don’t know how much business you’re doing right now, but I guarantee you that much, plus 50% of everything I do over that amount.”
At the other side of the table, the two brothers grew silent. They retreated to the window to quickly consider Kamen’s offer.
The offer was good and they could definitely use the money. Their business, while popular with customers, was strapped for cash. And it being 1932 and the height of the Great Depression, things weren’t looking up.
So they turned around to shake Kamen’s hand and accept his offer. Only one problem:
Kamen had fallen asleep while Roy and Walt Disney were conferring at the window.
This is a true story of how Disney the company survived and thrived.
Fact is, Disney was struggling in 1932. Cartoons are all right, but the costs are high, the risks are significant, and when you don’t have a new cartoon, you don’t eat.
That’s where Kay Kamen stepped in.
He was the owner of a marketing firm in Kansas City, and he had the idea of licensing Disney characters for merchandise. Roy And Walt were open to Kamen’s idea. They invited him to visit them in California.
So Kamen withdrew his entire life savings, sewed them into the lining of his coat, and got on a train to Los Angeles. He was so afraid somebody would steal his coat that he didn’t sleep for the 48 hours it took to make the trip. That’s why he dozed off during the meeting.
But the deal got done. A year later, there were 40 licenses for Mickey Mouse products.
Two years later, and Kamen was selling $35 million worth of Disney soap, hairbrushes, candy, baseball cards, and of course, watches. Keep in mind this was Great Depression dollars. The merchandise became a much more lucrative and stable source of income than the cartoons themselves.
The marketing lesson of this story is clear:
If Kay Kamen hadn’t created the merchandising machine for Disney in 1932, there’s a good chance none of us would know the Disney brand today.
The problem is most businesses — pre-Kamen Disney included — only focus on their current offer. They struggle and they wonder why. It’s because many front-end offers are not profitable.
That’s why it’s much better to plan a business a couple offers in advance. The first thing you sell to your customer… and then the thing after that… and then the thing after that.
That’s what Kay Kamen did for Disney. But here’s the thing:
There’s another way of planning out your offers that might be even better than this “two steps ahead” method.
In fact, according to a marketer who pulls in multiple millions of dollars of profits each year, this other method is much more reliable, and therefore much more lucrative. But my email today is already running long like a train from KC to LA — so I’ll tell you all about this other method tomorrow.