They ended it because they bit of more than they could chew, not out of altruism. Once they had threats of losing out on critics awards, they jumped ship instantly.
Reward good behavior, punish bad behavior. Recognition to Disney for ending their bullshit ban, but they still need to answer for their position on the $1.2b Anaheim parking lot that the city "leases" to them for $1/yr.
I think it's perfectly fair to ask companies like Disney and Nestle [1] why they're getting sweetheart deals from local governments where they're going to make millions or billions out of that property.
Having made the error of judgment are you suggesting they should have stuck to their guns and doubled down on it. Perhaps banning all the newspapers that reported the first ban?
> They absolutely do have a single, coherent plan, just as all businesses do: make money
Do you mind if I quote you on this?
My team has had a stressful time on our project and I think our manager could use a good laugh.
There isn't a coherent plan to make money -- or even accepting that as the primary goal -- at many or even most large companies, because people have different ideas of how you make money (particularly over anything more than 12 months).
My point was that one (S)VP that was tasked with handling a broad part of the business and blew a call badly, misusing broad authority over PR to retaliate over unfavorable coverage. This became public on Friday and PR had a statement ready on Tuesday. The timing makes me suspect that senior executives caught wind of it Friday evening/over the weekend and shut it down Monday. However, they stalled a day to get their PR ducks in a row, since they didn't see an immediate mass reaction on Monday.
Their one-day delayed PR release on an immediate (business-week) shutdown of that behavior came out concurrently with other PR releases and ended up looking reactive.
(Pure conjecture, but it smells like this.)
I doubt Disney backed down in a weekend if all of the senior executives were in agreement about strategy -- this sounds like the head of PR was given rope and decided he liked nooses.
Consider this: would Disney have changed this practice should it proven to not be a PR firestorm? If they thought they could actively reduce costs or increase profits with this plan, I highly doubt they would change. that is my point: if something is actively producing profit, the plan is to increase profits. Whether or not the actions people within the company effect this does not matter in the slightest, because the only thing people measure or care about as a meaningful indicator of improvement is increased profits.
> Do you mind if I quote you on this?
> My team has had a stressful time on our project and I think our manager could use a good laugh.
I'm not sure you intended this but the wording of this pretty offensive
> because the only thing people measure or care about as a meaningful indicator of improvement is increased profits.
This hasn't been my experience of large corporations, at all. Tons of things are measured besides profit, tons of other things are considered, and whole careers are staked on contentious debates over strategy.
Again, you seem to be treating Disney as a singular entity -- but it's probably more accurate to view it something like Europe: a squabbling mash of fiefdoms that happen to be loosely forced together, which occasionally go to war with each other, and have some sort of overarching body screaming at them that most fiefdoms half-ignore or drag their feet on implementing the directives of. (This really describes most large corporations -- which isn't surprising, considering that corporations emerged from that period of Europe.)
> I'm not sure you intended this but the wording of this pretty offensive
The implication was that it was laughably naive, yes. (I actually laughed when I read it.) Because viewing a corporation as a singular entity is a naive view: corporations aren't people, don't behave like people, and have internal conflicts that would send actual people to the mental hospital. You also seem to have a really strawman view of how executives operate, how corporate decisions are made, etc. It's like the comic book version of dramatized court decisions.
What we see here reeks of that model failing -- a snap decision made by a department VP which didn't align with the overall plan, immediately axed when the CEO + senior execs heard of it. I'd guess that there's probably a destroyed career, but Disney isn't interested in airing their dirty laundry, so we won't hear about it.
That actually happens a lot -- corporations firing staff for things the public thinks they should be fired for, because the corporate executives are actually of the same opinion about the (former) employees being incompetent in how they handled an issue. They usually just don't air it (and delay it a few months), because training the public to seek the blood of your staff when offended is absolutely insane.
> that is my point: if something is actively producing profit, the plan is to increase profits.
The company I work for likes to decrease short term profits for long term ecosystem health, because a vibrant system is fundamentally more valuable than extracting the maximum wealth in a straightforward way. I don't think we're alone or even particularly unusual in that belief -- though no corporation (including us) lives up to that ideal fully, either.
Corporations aren't angels, but they're not devils either. They're more like forests -- kind of dumb, not particularly coherent, capable of reshaping entire landscapes.
You did not respond to my point: would Disney have changed their way should there have been no PR fire storm? Nothing you are saying disagrees with what I am.
> The company I work for likes to decrease short term profits for long term ecosystem health, because a vibrant system is fundamentally more valuable than extracting the maximum wealth in a straightforward way.
And I bet if those profits stayed constant people would change their attitudes.
Additionally, if you are going to insult me I do not find it worth my time to respond to you again. Please try to be more cordial in your conversations here. I'm glad your company has backbone but in my pointless anecdotal evidence working for large companies, money speaks louder than any other point.
