Good Will Losing:

Wall Street Journal 5-20-08

It seems that Disney can`t get a break between their rabid fans and the Southern Baptists. Back when I was teaching animation to high school and adult ed students I taught a class in PowerPoint that dealt heavy on the animation features of this presentation software.

One of my students was this cool lady whose ex had been a Disney Park executive in the 60s and 70s. Knowing my fascination with all things animation she told me some outrageous stories about the early days of the park. She also told me why Disney lost their bulletproof charm with the press.

It use to be that the press got free tickets to Disneyland and Disney got lots of puff pieces in the papers. Quite a while after Walt died someone decided that giving out free stuff was bad for business in the short run bottom line kind of bean counter way. I wonder just how much that savings has cost them over the years?

Good will is priceless. Walt knew that. Disney has been fair game in the press ever since. Now Disney is doing the same thing with their free Virtual Disneyland web site. They opened it up during their 50th Anniversary Celebration. They have over a million registered users, most of them kids and all of them fans. And now they are closing down the site because it does not directly generate revenue.

Hey, Disney bean counters, good will is priceless.