The Other McCain

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Disney Got Woke, Now Going Broke

Posted on | April 23, 2022 | Comments Off on Disney Got Woke, Now Going Broke

Disney’s decision to declare war on Florida parents could not have come at a worse moment for the company, which has been struggling:

The Walt Disney Co. is the worst performing stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the past year, plummeting 31 percent in the last 12 months.
Of the 30 companies that comprise the Dow, Disney has seen its stock drop the most on a percentage basis, followed by 3M, which is down 25 percent, and Home Depot, down 23 percent.
Disney shares were down more than 5 percent Wednesday as investors remained skittish on streaming entertainment companies following Netflix’s disastrous first quarter results. Disney+ subscription results recently disappointed Wall Street when the company reported quarterly results in November, causing the stock to tumble.
The Mouse House also faces difficulties in Florida, where the state senate voted on Wednesday to pass a measure that would deprive Disney World in Orlando of its self-governing status. . . .
Disney’s free fall comes as the company has embraced woke, far-left politics, specifically the exposure of young children to radical LGBTQ ideology. In so doing, the entertainment giant has alienated millions of customers and picked a fight with Florida GOP leaders.

While correlation does not necessarily prove causation, the two phenomena — getting woke and going broke — are not coincidentally related. They are the product of corporate culture defined by insularity and arrogance, when management lets itself become isolated in an echo chamber of sycophants (“Great idea, boss!”) and begins ignoring the basic principles of customer service. The Disney “brand” was originally synonymous with wholesome family entertainment suitable for kids, but as their empire expanded, management lost sight of this brand value and began craving approval from their Hollywood peers.

Why else would they let themselves be pushed by a bunch of radical LGBTQ activists into a culture war battle against Florida parents? The desire to be seen as “sensitive” to the demands of these fringe activists (who certainly are not part of Disney’s core audience) was allowed to override basic marketing considerations. The war against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill was essentially a partisan Democrat propaganda operation, a preemptive effort to take out Gov. Ron DeSantis as a 2024 presidential candidate. Given which way the political winds are blowing (e.g., last year’s defeat of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia), did it make sense for Disney to jump into such a fight? Disney pandering to the “Drag Queen Story Hour” crowd makes as much sense, marketing-wise, as Golden Corral trying to pander to radical vegans. If sanity had prevailed at Disney HQ, they would have ignored the demands that they join the Democrats’ thinly veiled partisan war against DeSantis.

Instead, at a time when the competition for the online streaming audience should have been the focus of Disney’s organizational efforts, they let themselves be distracted by a propaganda campaign that, while it might not be the cause of Disney’s problems, is certainly not a solution to those problems. We see a similar narrative unwinding at Netflix and CNN, two other brands that have gone the same way.

“Get woke, go broke” — it’s a guaranteed formula for failure.

Ed Driscoll quotes Ace of Spades: “Has corporate America started to get the message that it is no longer a cost-free move to always side with the exotic flora of the extreme left? And that maybe just staying out of politics and making business the business of business is the better path?” They won’t learn anything until they’re bankrupted and ruined.




 

Category: Hollywood, Media Bias

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