Larry Murphy
Building the Disney Brand
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| Murphy Photo by Gilles Mingasson/Getty |
It was reading a Life magazine article (Ann Moore, take note) about Eastern colleges that helped propel Lawrence P. Murphy from a small town in Missouri to Williams College, followed by HBS. In 1985, after positions at Citibank, Bain, and Marriott, Murphy was hired by The Walt Disney Company — then a $1.5 billion operation — as chief strategic officer. Responsible for strategy, acquisitions, business development, and the Disney brand on a global basis, Murphy helped grow the firm to a $60 billion enterprise by the time he and the Mouse parted company in 1998.
“There’s no question that media enterprises have grown tremendously over the years in scope and complexity,” Murphy observes. “There is a constant tension, however, between rational management and the forces of ego and creativity.”
At Disney, Murphy was especially proud of the Disney Cruise Line, which he personally developed and managed and which customers rate as a top Disney offering. “We considered joint ventures with established cruise lines, but to do it the Disney way, we realized we had to own and run it ourselves.”
Murphy, a Beverly Hills resident, has now hung out his shingle as a corporate strategy and business development advisor. He believes that sheer size, coupled with some ill-advised mergers, have hurt creativity and bottom-line performance at big-name media and entertainment companies. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Murphy says, “to see the industry go through a period of restructuring and even some degree of deconsolidation that will lead to more effective management and increased valuations.”
— GE
