If you have ever been in one of my homes, you may see a touch of Disney in some of them. Over the years, I have been asked why I seem to try to use Disney as a theme thread in my homes and advertising. A few years ago, one local magazine even went so far as to try to write a 60 Minute-style expos’e article about me as being sort of a man who is trying to BE Walt Disney. They mentioned that when I was a kid, that going on a trip to a Disney theme park was the “Holy grail” of vacations. Boy, did they get it wrong!

     As a kid, I never actually went to a Disney theme park nor can I really remember even asking to go to one. We were the kind of family who was happier taking a trip to the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee to take in the sights. We even liked  going to the East coast to see the big International Sailboat Show on several occasions, but for some reason, Disney was never much on our radar scope.

    The first time I went to Disney, I was a college aged kid on a trip to Florida, selling (of all things) small boats at a boat show. I thought I would take a bus ride to Disney World and see what it was all about.  My interests were in advertising and art and I loved the way that all the Disney theme park people were so freindly and what a great impression all that cheerfulness made on the visitors.   I also marveled at the great architecture and the wonderful , fanciful art all around the theme park. But, how does this relate to homes?  We’re coming to that.

     Many years later, past this event, after I had gotten into the home designing and building business, I wanted to try to bring that same friendliness and cleanliness(did I mention just how immaculate that Disney theme park was?) to my business. I put on my advertising/promotions thinking cap and tried to find a large business entity that I could strive to emulate as a model for my own business.

    Many business do this. It is part of creating a business model. As I was considering which major successful business was closely aligned with my own desire and motives, I considered what my business was trying to be. First and foremost, I wanted my business to be a creative and innovative place to be. I wanted our products to also reflect this air of creativity . I wanted our place and people to be as friendly and cheerful as possible. It became obvious that the one company who rises to the top of folks minds when you are thinking about creative company’s would be Disney. What Walt Disney  was to cartoons and theme parks was an inventor and innovator. We should strive to be the same to the world of homes.  

     It seemed logical to me that if we were to mentally connect the public’s eye  with the best aspects of Disney’s ability to make folks happy, we would more easily be able to “brand’ ourselves(that is a fancy term for aligning ourselves with something our proposed customers may want to have, or find attractive) and identify ourselves to the public.   Few knew what Miracle Homes was but many knew who or what Disney was.  For this reason, I chose to make a mental connection with the Disney brand, but I did not want to become another Disney by any means. I did not attempt to grow a mustache or wear suits or take up smoking, or move to California, to try to be like Walt.   I wanted to use Disney as a starting point but then wanted to make sure we grew our own distinct identity.

     Then came Miracle Mouse. To be more exact, Miracle Mouse, our little creative mascot character, came before I ever decided to attempt to try to adopt Disney as a brand image. This character is seen by some as a close-copy of Disney’s Mickey Mouse character. I certainly do see the resemblance but here’s the real scoop on why I chose a mouse mascot, and how he came to be.

     I had grown up in a family that enjoyed sailing on Lake Michigan. One favorite sailing magazine was called Cruising World. In that magazine, there was a page that was artfully decorated to show how to build a certain boat project.  In those cartoon-type drawings, there was usually a small mouse somewhere in each drawing page. I thought this was a cute thing and also thought how any other character, other than a mouse, would be too big and not be able to be put into all the various drawings I would do for my homes. This first mouse I saw in that magazine was rather realistic so my first Miracle mouse experience was really me just going to my main home illustration artist and simply telling him to draw-in a small mouse who maybe was wearing a hard hat and suspenders.  He was to be a subtle add-on to each home illustration. I gave little more direction than that. Todd Dakins, an illustrator drew this first Miracle Mouse. I thought, when I have any illustration done for me, I would try to include this little guy somewhere for folks to discover.

     Years later, I  decided we were going to do our first television commercials. I decided to do something clever by trying to have our little creative mascot make a small appearance at the end of every commercial by doing something different as he walks onto the final shot. One time he would walk- on carrying our logo. The next time he would walk-on then trip with the logo. The next time he would parachute onto the scene and his parachute would unfold to become the logo. Each time, he would do something different.

     To get this little guy animated, I went to an animation studio in Racine. When I met with this studio, I gave them my idea of what Miracle Mouse should look like. They gave me a stack of drawings of what the character could look like intead. I had gone to art and advertising school for 7 years (I had the no -degree plan) and I was a pretty good political cartoonist in my high school years.  Suddenly, it came to me. This mouse could further my public suggestion (branding)that we had the Disney-flair for creativity  in home designing/building.  I could design my mouse character to have some distinct items on him that might bring back a mental relationship to Mickey Mouse. I had to be careful as I did not want to copy the character using his round ears or white gloves. I gave him black hands. Micky had a snout, so my mouse could not. Mickey never wore a hat or blue jean suspenders but Miracle Mouse would wear this and have brown work shoes instead of Mickey’s big yellow shoes. I tried to envision  him as perhaps a beaver, or cricket, or muskrat, or badger instead. But none of those animals seemed to roll-off the tongue as easily as Miracle Mouse did.

     Disney never ended his commercials with a tag line about being Christian based, or having his family in the picture, but I wanted our own identity merged with that established Disney identity, not just a carbon copy.  I decided to try to make my place of employment worthy of being a place folks would want to live and work. I (and my wife Jacquie of course) decided to take the whole company on vacations together. We decided to take everyone out to eat once a week. We even decided to give little merit awards and public recoginition for doing nice things. We took managers to Disney University to learn how to please people.  We gave  surprise big checks to workers at our Christmas party .  Some of these checks were thousands of dollars and no one was expecting a dime before we gave those checks.

     I  went the extra measure of creating an office environment where we all were wearing the same Miracle Team attire, and created a large swimming pond in our back yard for the staff to use on weekends or on lunch with their families.  We decided that if we were to be good citizens, we would be generous in giving to our community as well. Everything was working so well and our staff named us one of the top 25 workplaces in Wisconsin!

     We became the fastest growing home builder ever to hit Wisconsin. Our staff grew fast and we soon were building a new facility as we had to move to a larger facility to keep up with our growth to a staff of 70. By this time, I decided to try to produce our own television commercials that were fully animated. The bids to do this were over $110,000 for a 30 second commercial. I thought this was ridiculous and that I could do them myself if I had an experienced person or two to show me how. I decided to try to hire a few ex-Disney artists to be on our advertising and marketing staff. They brought with them an air of creativity and bought us to another level of creativity.

     When the housing market crashed, the new building project was put on “hold” and we layed off most all of our advertising department including all the Disney artists, except one. Today as we get ready for our home for entry into the MBA Parade Of Homes opening of our Hybrid Wonderhome in less than two months, we are working on premiering our read-along Miracle Mouse children’s book in our kid’s bedroom suite. I hope you will come over THIS WEEKEND to meet me and take a sneak-preview of this exciting new home we are building(and two others right next door) from 1 to 4, in Richfield’s Reflections Village development. The feeling might not be exactly Disney , but it is as close as you may come this side of Orlando.

     Blessings,

     Tom Hignite      

    Than

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