MOST BOYCOTTS FAIL, and the numbers below show why our boycotts against Disney and ABC are likely to fail too..IF we don't focus them effectively.
The numbers suggest that a very successful boycott by US AS INDIVIDUALS against Disney theme parks probably would reduce the company's revenue by less than 1%.
And I suspect that similar analyses would show similar results for ABC.
Even if these numbers are off by a factor of 10 (a prospect I consider unlikely), this means that any boycott that we might organize against Disney or ABC is unlikely to hurt the company much, if at all.
Therefore, as an alternative to boycotting Disney and ABC AS INDIVIDUALS, I suggest that we organize a campaign of convincing large organizations to cancel conventions planned to take place at Disney parks and resorts and of convincing large advertisers to cancel advertising on ABC.
Please tell me if you disagree. My numbers are on the flip.
MY NUMBERS:
Last week, DNC delivered a petition with 200,000 signatures to ABC protesting the network's planned broadcast of "The Path to 9/11." Let's assume (generously) that for everyone who signed that petition (something that's much easier to do than a boycott), there are 2.5 other people in the country who know about and were very upset by ABC/Disney's decision to air "The Path to 9/11."
That would mean that there are roughly 500,000 -- half a million -- of us in the world who are pissed off enough to participate in a boycott of ABC and Disney.
That's only 0.2% of America's total population of 296 million people -- one-fifth of one percent -- and, again, that's probably being generous.
Last year, about 12.4 million people visited Disney theme parks worldwide -- equivalent to 4% of the U.S. population, although of course not all of these visitors were Americans.
If we assume (generously) that the same percentage of Americans who visit Disney's theme parks every year occurs in the group of us who were upset by ABC's broadcast, then only 21,000 of us who are now threatening not to attend a Disney theme park really were likely to go to one in the first place.
In other words, even if we assume that a generous number of people are upset with ABC AND we assume that ALL of the people in that group (21,000) who would normally visit a Disney park now will refrain from doing so, this only represents a 0.2% loss of customers for Disney.
Even a very successful boycott of Disney by these INDIVIDUALS would only cost the company about 0.2%.
U.S. population:
296,000,000
Potential boycotters:
500,000
Potential boycotters as % of the U.S. population:
0.17%
Disney theme park visitors:
12,400,000
Disney theme park visitors as % of the U.S. population:
4.19%
Potential boycotters who are Disney visitors:
20,946
Potential boycotters who are Disney visitors as a percentage of all Disney visitors:
0.17%
These are all round numbers, and I may be off by large factors in the case of some of the estimates, but this is not likely to change the final percentages very much.
A similar analysis could be undertaken of all of us turning off ABC.
MY CONCLUSION:
We're unlikely to hurt Disney or ABC very much by boycotting the companies AS INDIVIDUALAS.
Instead, we need to focus our efforts on convincing big conventions to cancel their meetings at Disney theme parks and resorts -- rather than simply saying that we're not going to go to the theme parks ourselves.
And we need to convince key advertisers to withdraw ad dollars from ABC -- rather than simply re-programming our Tivos. (I don't even have a Tivo. :( )