Eddie, just a question regarding sponsors and attractions.
I'm guessing it's different in each case, but do you have any information on what the creative process is like when sponsors are setting up a pavilion?
Do the sponsors create a lot of input for the designs, or let the imagineers come to them with ideas and they approve them, or is it different each time?
It is different each time. I can speak to some of the projects i was involved in and give you these examples. The opportunity for WDI is that you can get some of the money that they are paying to upgrade or build the attraction, so getting the sponsor fired up about what you want to do is important. They don't dictate the ideas or come to creative meetings. You research and study them and then come back with ideas. Fedex was going to sponsor both Space Mountains and we had to integrate their identity into them as part of the deal. We pitched adding on-board audio to the ride at Disneyland (first ever and well received) and was given monies to do that from them. We then had to show them how we were going to redo the old RCA display in WDW to tell a story of how packages would be beamed or teleported to other planets in the future. The thing here is that their presence was dictated by overt post RCA show in that it was already there and they see their message as being overlaid.
As for "Mission:Space", or other new attractions, you take your show around to present to potential sponsors that make a good creative fit, like Boeing or Rockwell. There is a department called "participant affairs" that finds the sponsors, manages the relationship (gets the sponsors to renew their deal) and negotiates the deals. You work through them. The ride is sometimes the minor part of the deal as the brands usually gets benefits that are more valuable to them, like movie promotion tie-ins, selling their stuff in the parks, etc. The ride sometimes is the thing they "have" to do to get the more valuable pieces of the relationship. Kodak, McDonalds, and Coke are examples of companies that benefited from selling in the parks. They usually want to be associated with more relevant attractions too. Coke used to complain about "Coke Corner" being too old fashioned, and preferred being in Tomorrowland and seen as more "cool". Sponsorships have gotten harder and harder to get and it has become an issue for the company. The economy has taken the Disney relationship "off the corporate balance sheet" if they don't directly see a return. Some have walked away after years. In the past, to some retiring CEO's, having an "attraction" was a "legacy" decision for them as it was for Metlife and their pavilion. More recently the call or demand for what is called "activation", meaning investing in show enhancements that directly moved product has been a priority. So those "Cool Zones" mister stations were paid for by them. Or more signage on walls, etc. The heavier messaging for GM in the show itself (Test Track IS a car factory) and others shows that the sponsor in some cases pays for what they get out of it. GE in the past was given enormous presence in the COP.
Your job becomes finding ways to mine money from the sponsor that enhances the show because you're not going to get it from the park. You want to balance out and blend them in to improve the show but is a series of tradeoffs. As a kid, I liked sponsors if they were woven in properly and made logical sense. Del Monte sponsoring America sings was dumb but having a real Bank of America, Upjohn Pharmacy, or Kodak Camera shop on Main Street made the whole town it more legit to the 1890's. Starbucks won't. Look at how "Dole whip" at the Tiki Room is a must have ritual! Coke and Baseball go together too and on Main Street their Americana improved the show. So it can be a benefit. I got to browse the archives of both Coke and Kodak for DLP and used their period ads and images to the show's benefit.
You try and make their presence as fun as possible and as a good fit if you can. Sometimes it's a stretch and you really just have to make it work as best you can. You try and get extra money for things unrelated to the hard messaging that will make the guest like the show better because of the sponsor. They understand that and will pay for it to a degree.
The R&D learning that went into putting onboard audio on SM in DL informed all of the other later systems (like never add speakers to old trains!), a great million dollar investment and the guest exit reviews were over 97 percent "excellent". Now we have it all over the parks. You also have to negotiate the sizes and quantity of their logo signage too. Always a tradeoff. A dangerous game indeed. I think over time it can erode the purity of the park if you let things get out of hand.
