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Kansas firm sells candid Wal-Mart videos
Recent article about video ownership rights:
https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24033191/
“Kansas firm sells candid Wal-Mart videos
Ex-contractor Flagler opens up archive to lawyers, union critics
Wal-Mart’s internal meetings are on display in three decades worth of videos made by a Kansas production company scrambling to stay in business after Wal-Mart stopped using the firm.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dropped longtime contractor Flagler Productions in 2006. In response to losing its biggest customer, the small company has opened its archive, for a fee, to researchers who include plaintiffs’ lawyers and union critics seeking clips of unguarded moments at the world’s largest retailer.
Those moments never meant for public display include a scene of male managers parading in drag at an executive meeting, a clip used by union-backed critics at Wal-Mart Watch for a recent advertisement castigating the retailer’s attitude toward female employees.
“The videos provide insight into the company’s real corporate culture when they’re not in the public eye,” Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Stacie Lock Temple said Tuesday.
Much of the interest in the candid videos is coming from plaintiff lawyers pursuing cases against Wal-Mart.
“The rarity is that it exists at all,” said Brad Seligman, lead attorney in a massive class-action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart discriminated systemically against female employees.
“Once in a while you come upon documents that are helpful in a case,” the Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer added. “What’s amazing about this is that this company has a video record going back many years showing senior management in at times fairly candid situations.”
Seligman said one clip from Lenexa, Kan.-based Flagler shows Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton in the late 1980s telling the board of directors that not enough women were in management.
Wal-Mart denies it discriminates against women and in recent years has published its annual women and minority hiring statistics.
Wal-Mart said it is unhappy with the public airing of its video record.
“Needless to say, we did not pay Flagler Productions to tape internal meetings with this aftermarket in mind,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore said.
She declined to comment on any legal steps the company might be considering.
Flagler says Wal-Mart has no legal power over the videos because the two sides did not sign a contract when founder Mike Flagler was hired in the 1970s to produce Wal-Mart meetings and management conferences.
Co-owner Mary Lyn Villaneuva said the business continued producing and filming such events as shareholder meetings and an annual store manager conference until it was suddenly dropped by Wal-Mart in 2006.
Wal-Mart was about 95 percent of Flagler’s business, Villaneuva said. The loss meant the company nearly collapsed. So it looked to its assets and realized that it could charge for access to its video library.
“We would like to go back to being a production company, but right now we’re getting by as an archive,” Villaneuva said.
Flagler charges $250 an hour for video research and additional fees for a DVD copy of film clips.
Villaneuva said Wal-Mart has offered to buy the video library for $500,000. But Flagler considers that too low for a collection they value at several million dollars. She said the two sides have been in contact off and on about a possible sale.
Wal-Mart declined to comment on whether it is in talks to buy the archive.”
Randy
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104 Replies
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interesting way to close up shop.
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[Randy Wheeler] “Flagler says Wal-Mart has no legal power over the videos because the two sides did not sign a contract when founder Mike Flagler was hired in the 1970s to produce Wal-Mart meetings and management conferences.”
I’m going to be REAL interested to see how this claim holds up once the lawyers get involved. More power to them if they can hold on to this claim and keep selling the videos, but I’m really hoping those guys got incredibly good legal counsel before opening up their archives.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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My first question when I read this article is why did Wal Mart drop them. I’m sure there’s two sides to that story. I would think any company willing to breach client trust like this more than likely was not on the up and up in the rest of their dealings. The work examples on their web site are pretty top notch, so obviously quality of work was not the issue. I find it hard to believe a company like Wal Mart didn’t have an iron clad agreement as to the rights of the footage. This sounds like a vindictive move on the part of Flagler for being dropped. Since they’re holding out for more money, I doubt they’re doing this for some greater moral purpose. I pose this question to the forum. If faced with the same situation, what would you do?
Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media -
I hope that Flagler gets nailed to the wall and that the pain of their idiocy haunts them for the rest of their lives. This is one of the biggest breaches of trust I have ever seen — well, other than the American political system.
Wal-Mart has a right to privacy and when they hired this company, I am sure that privacy was one of the terms and conditions. (I am NOT condoning WM’s business practices, that is a different issue. To be honest, I don’t like WM and think they destroy local economies.)
I have no doubt in my mind that this is nothing more than a money-grabbing ploy by a bitter loser and if Wal-Mart had not dumped Flagler, I don’t believe that we’d be seeing this stuff today.
Shame on them. What unprofessional hacks, they give the corporate video industry a bad name and this hurts everyone’s reputation (as I am sure this will cause a lot of mistrust in the industry). I hope they get what they truly deserve — and that isn’t anything nice, I tell you.
Creeps, pure creeps, in my opinion.
Yours may vary.
Ron Lindeboom
PS: Me dear ole sainted Dad always warned me that two wrongs don’t make a right. Boy this sure shows that one to great effect.
PSS: But three wrongs squared, to the fourth power, DO make a right — according to Gary Larson (who isn’t my Dad).
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If I had wal-mart by the danglies like Flagler does I would squeeze em for all they’re worth too. I’m sure there is another side to the story and yes it’s a dirty move making the videos available but hell Wal-Mart is one the most evil corporations around.
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In my opinion, you are by your own admission what I consider to be every bit the contemptible opportunist that Flagler is.
If you can’t see how this is going to backfire on the already ailing corporate video profession, then I also believe that you are a blind self-centered opportunist, and someone that I hope finds no place in corporate video.
Remind me to never listen to anything you have to say.
Ron Lindeboom
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All I’m saying is Wal-mart deserves everything it gets, if you’re still listening. I hope it helps the unions and lawyers fight against Wal-Mart. Looks good on ’em.
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Also, for what it’s worth I don’t think this will affect the corporate video world one single bit other than making businesses think – “gee maybe I should get them to sign a contract saying who really owns the footage.”
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I’m just really surprised that a company the size of walmart doesn’t have an internal video dept. They have enough closed circuit TV’s in the stores to keep them busy.
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People can argue Wal-Mart’s ethics are in the toilet. Me, I don’t like the company one bit — BUT there is a far bigger issue at play here and it is an issue that is best illustrated using Flagler themself.
In the MSNBC.com feature on the issue, it is said…
Flagler says Wal-Mart has no legal power over the videos because the two sides did not sign a contract when founder Mike Flagler was hired in the 1970s to produce Wal-Mart meetings and management conferences.
Co-owner Mary Lyn Villaneuva said the business continued producing and filming such events as shareholder meetings and an annual store manager conference until it was suddenly dropped by Wal-Mart in 2006.
Wal-Mart was about 95 percent of Flagler’s business, Villaneuva said. The loss meant the company nearly collapsed. So it looked to its assets and realized that it could charge for access to its video library.
“We would like to go back to being a production company, but right now we’re getting by as an archive,” Villaneuva said.
Flagler charges $250 an hour for video research and additional fees for a DVD copy of film clips.
So, they actually WANT and THINK that people should and could take them serious after this? Wow, that’s a stretch!
I wouldn’t trust them and would question their business sense pure and simple. As to integrity? I think they have none. Your opinion may differ.
To me, this is not an issue of a company having high moral standards and releasing the tapes on ethical grounds — that, I could at least understand.
Instead…
They are releasing them (by their own admission) purely for monetary gain. And I, for one, believe that it was clearly known and understood by both parties that these tapes were not being recorded for general issue or distribution. If Flagler had ever failed to understand that point and had brought it up to Wal-Mart management once in the three decades they had the account, they’d have lost the job on the spot!
As a businessperson myself, I HIGHLY doubt that they would have had the job handed to them if the understanding were not there that these were private recordings. But that is going to be decided in the courts, I have little doubt.
And while I do not like Wal-Mart and have only to look at the adverse affect that they have had here on our own Paso Robles, California economy and downtown, I realize that even companies have to have rights. (Even if some people do not believe that they deserve them.)
By doing as they have done, Flagler has largely destroyed their chance of building a business. They were the ones who built a business with only one client. Sheesh. That is Business 101, boys and girls. Lose your one client and you are out of business.
Backstab that one client publicly — especially when that client happens to be one of the richest companies in the world — and your chances of getting clients to trust that you won’t do it to them, are zip, nil, nada, nine, nope and none.
BUT THE BIGGEST BACKLASH here is going to be seen in the days ahead as companies who have used production companies quit using them out of fear of this kind of thing happening to them.
Cheer for your own business’s demise, boys and girls, but I won’t be rallying behind Flagler or their, in my opinion, continuation of their lack of ethics.
They put themselves into this position for three decades. They were willing participants in any moral breach and excesses that some of you might argue as being Wal-Mart practices and deficiencies.
These are no saints and they are not heroes. They are the people, in my opinion, who with this one move have done more to add to the demise of an already rough and ailing corporate video marketplace.
Watch the greeting you get the next time you have to do a corporate cold call.
Then send Flagler a thank you note.
Ron Lindeboom
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