People Power + Corporation = big impact.
Stop the presses, the unthinkable has happened. Walt Disney, that purveyor of sugar-coated fairy-tale movies, books, television shows and, oh yes, amusement parks, has just made a monumental move for the good. Yes, it’s true. Listen to this: by 2015 they will no longer accept advertising from companies that are trying to push junk food into the mouths of children and in the process adding padding to their ever increasing waistlines. And this includes cereals with more than 10g of the white stuff per serving. It’s an unprecedented move and of course those people who can never say anything nice about anything, i.e. the critics, are already calling it a bare-faced marketing ploy. But here’s the rub. So what? If that’s really what it is, that the big-wigs in the Disney CEO offices were only rubbing their hands together in glee thinking ‘how can we get even more money to fill our coffers’ and the answer they came up with is ‘not showing children ads encouraging them to eat junk food’ then so be it. It’s the same philosophy behind supporting Starbucks when they sell Fair Trade coffee. You may not like their ‘push-out-the-independent-coffee-shop-strategy’ -- and I certainly don’t which is why I never go there -- but you can’t argue the fact that getting Starbucks to sell Fair Trade coffee is going to have much more of an impact then one mom-and-pop café doing the same thing. So swallow Disney’s move with a side of cynicism if you must but also remember this: Disney wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t think their consumers were demanding it. So, that’s another reason to cheer – this move is a reminder that although it usually doesn’t feel like it, power does, sometimes, still lie with the people.