Disney Cutting Up to 1,000 Jobs as New CEO Consolidates Marketing
Summary:
- Disney will cut up to 1,000 positions in the coming weeks, primarily in its marketing department.
- The layoffs represent less than 1% of Disney's 231,000-person workforce and were planned before CEO Josh D'Amaro took office in March.
- New chief marketing officer Asad Ayaz is uniting the marketing group under a cost-reduction initiative code-named "Project Imagine."
A thousand jobs sounds like a lot. At Disney, it's less than half of 1% of the company. The cuts are targeted, not panicked - and they were already in motion before the new CEO even started.
Reorganization, Not Desperation
New CEO Josh D'Amaro didn't order these cuts. They were planned under a cost-reduction initiative with the code name "Project Imagine" before he took office in March.
D'Amaro's move was hiring Asad Ayaz as chief marketing officer with a clear mandate: unite Disney's fragmented marketing departments. If you've ever worked at a large company, you know what "unite the departments" means.
Different groups running separate campaigns, separate budgets, separate strategies. Ayaz's job is to merge them - which inevitably means cutting duplicate roles.
Disney employed about 231,000 people at the end of fiscal 2025. One thousand positions is 0.4% of the workforce.
What to Watch
This matters less for Disney's stock than for the company's storytelling ability. The real test is whether a consolidated marketing department actually helps Disney reach audiences more effectively.
