Re: Flagler must be smoking crack, imnsho...

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