I’ve had the opportunity to get up close and personal to companies that must manage brands that are dependent upon individuals or at least driven largely by personality. In my past life, I did a lot of work with a couple of movie studios — one that was trying to capitalize on its properties in a retail context (think the Warner Brothers store, though that wasn’t the company in question), and one that was trying to extend the life of a major past library of movies back into retail through distribution to retailers.

In the past, this was challenging enough in and of itself. Today, thanks to a lot of the electronic pressures on traditional media, there are a whole new host of challenges. Why am I bringing this up? I had a front-line view into those challenges this weekend, in a really sharp juxtaposition. I wandered through the Disney store while on a business trip, one of the stores that they have revamped into the new model of store experience (their new Times Square store was one of the first to get this new look, apparently — it was a big deal at NRF last year). And then this weekend, I spend two days at Universal Orlando.

So here’s the first thing that struck me. If you go to Universal Studios, specifically the Islands of Adventure, you apparently are only going there to go to the Harry Potter Adventure. In the interest of full disclosure, my family went there for exactly the same reason. But our first inkling that we were in over our heads was when we rounded the last corner into Harry Potter land and found ourselves face to face with an entire family decked out in Hogwarts robes. Oh-kay.

But while the butterbeer and the pumpkin juice tasted fantastic (and the lines for the butterbeer in particular were almost as long as the lines for the rides), and we shopped all the stores, we left with very little merchandise. It was kind of disappointing, what was available. Compared to Disney, who had a line of merchandise featuring all of the Disney princesses in modern evening gowns in its store, Universal didn’t seem to be having much fun with its Harry Potter merchandise. In fact, most of it seemed constrained by keeping very true to the world of Harry Potter. You could get Gryffindor scarves and robes. Chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. But once you wandered off the set, so to speak, the pickings got slim. The whole area of the Ministry of Magic alone seemed way under-explored, and open to a lot of possibilities. We were struck by how having a well-developed world in a lot of ways made it hard to bring that world to us Muggles.

The next day, we went to Universal Studios, the “main” theme park, I guess. There, true to its Hollywood origins, the park focused more on providing a feel for the behind the scenes of the movie. Call me behind the times (I guess it’s been a long time since I’ve been there), but the ride that struck me at that park was Terminator 2. A whole movie (short — maybe 15-20 minutes all-in) with the original actors from T2, including Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a pretty bit futuristic set complete with computer graphics animations and a decent amount of stunt work. How expensive was that? And sadly, probably not a property that Universal can squeeze any more life out of without some kind of significant “reboot”. Tron Legacy made a run at avoiding the problem of one face signifying most of the value of the brand (in that case Jeff Bridges) but frankly, it was just eerie to watch. T2 at Universal Studios will be the experience that it is until the day they turn it off because it’s not like they could refilm any of that stuff.

Animated characters offer much more flexibility, provided they’re not voiced by very distinctive and famous actors whose sense of humor may not extend to constantly reprising their roles to breathe more life into a theme park ride. Coming soon to Universal is Despicable Me, where minions, yellow, pill-shaped creatures of dubious origin, pretty much could be voiced by anyone – and offer a huge degree of flexibility in what they can do with the property. But even then, the merchandise options were really limited.

Again, to contrast it with Disney — when you look at what they’re doing with the Muppets, in anticipation of that movie release this Thanksgiving. When you see how they both manage to carefully shepherd their properties’ brands (though I think this has been a more recent development) and yet still have fun with those brands, it points to a way forward for maximizing brand value.

To ramble further, if you take this and extend it to any retail brand — the point is to develop something of a personality. That’s how people describe the brands they love anyway, right? With movies, music, books — creative properties — the brand is defined by the end product. It’s the sum of the actors and the mood of the film. Men in Black have a much different personality than Terminator. With retail brands in particular, they exist a lot farther away from that concrete grounding that helps them describe who they are or what they aspire to be. But the constraints and opportunities — exploited or missed — that personality-driven brands must accommodate can become a great learning ground for retailers as they turn to become much more brand-focused. I think the most important learning of all, however, is the one of Disney vs. Universal when it comes to expressing that brand through merchandise — and that is to manage the creative tension between staying true to the brand vs. having fun. Every brand should take itself completely seriously — that is part of the all-important authenticity that helps define a brand. But not so seriously that it can’t have fun every once in awhile.