FROM 2007
JACK LINDQUIST
talks about his most elaborate marketing campaigns

by Scott Wolf

Jack worked at Disneyland from the first year it opened, initially in advertising. Later he was the Vice President of Marketing for Walt Disney Attractions, and ultimately became the President of Disneyland. I don't think it's using the term loosely to say Jack is a marketing genius.

To say it was an absolute treat for me to be able to interview him about his career with Disney would be a gross understatement. It is my extreme pleasure to be able to share with you this interview with this wonderful person.

Jack Lindquist: You know, in 1955, there was no marketing department. Not only for Disney… anywhere. There was an advertising department, public relations department, publicity department, promotion department… all separate. It wasn’t until later that companies started putting everything together under marketing. Under an umbrella for advertising, publicity, promotions, group sales, the whole ball of wax, and so we started to reorganize that way.

Scott Wolf: Were you involved with all the parks?

JL: I was involved with Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland, and I was involved in the initial planning of Disneyland Paris.

SW: There were so many great events I loved when you were working there. “Blast to the Past” and “State Fair.” Didn’t you give away cars for the 30th anniversary?

JL: Well, in ’85 for the 30th anniversary we had created what we called the Gift Giver Extraordinare. Every 3,000th person won a Chevrolet, every 30,000th person won an Oldsmobile. Every 300,000th person won a Buick, every three millionth person won a Cadillac and we gave away 106 General Motors cars that year.

The whole gate was computerized so you went thru the turnstile and if you were the 30th person bells unlocked, the bigger the number got the more things happened, so with three millionth we shot fireworks off from the main gate and everything else.

SW: Did you come up with that idea?

JL: Yeah. You know, we had just come off the Olympic year, 1984. Leading up to it, everybody was saying it’s going to be a banner year for tourism, Southern California, with the Olympics taking place in L.A., so a year in advance you couldn’t get a hotel room. People started to say, “This year is going to be your best during the Olympics.”

Well, a lot of Southern Californians got out of town to avoid the crowds and all these millions of people that were supposed to come didn’t show up. Our attendance was down from about 10.1 (million) the year before to 9.4. During the Olympics they were selling hotel rooms around Disneyland for whatever they could get.

So I knew we needed something to rebound from the year before and I saw the need for doing something different. I thought well, you know everybody celebrates first anniversaries, fifth, tenth, the twenty fifth, but nobody celebrates the thirtieth. Why not celebrate the thirtieth anniversary?

I sent Ron Miller and our Chairman of the Board Ray Watson a memo. I think it was September of ’84 and said, “Here’s the idea of the 30th.” I outlined the whole year as we just talked about, that we’d have this mammoth giveaway at the main gate, and the perception I wanted to build was if you had never visited Disneyland or if you had been here a thousand times, you don’t want to miss 1985, the thirtieth anniversary because this is going to be a different, exciting, spectacular year. We didn’t have any major attractions opening so we pretty much did the whole thing with bells and whistles.

We did things like the cornfield Mickey, which was celebrating Mickey’s 60th anniversary… that was 1988… when we created a cornfield in Iowa of 560 acres and planted corn in the shape of Mickey’s head. We worked with the University of Iowa and it was on the jet path from San Francisco to Chicago and Seattle to Chicago and we got the pilots to tell everybody, “Look out both sides of the window and see the cornfield Mickey.”

SW: You let the pilots know on commercial flights?

JL: Yeah.

SW: That’s incredible publicity!

JL: Yeah, it was worldwide.

And then we created Disney dollars. We figured that we’re bigger than a lot of small countries, why don’t we have our own currency. I think the thing with that was you had to be tongue in cheek, but serious. It was not just a promotion gimmick. It wasn’t a giveaway. I wanted to create a real currency for Disneyland, and we did and it’s still be used today.

I don’t really know where it stands today, but the last time I really heard was about 1997, that at that time there was over one hundred and fifty million dollars of Disney dollars outstanding.

SW: Did you come up with the idea yourself or with a team?

JL: No, I came up with that myself. You know, you come up with something but one person doesn’t make it happen. You’ve got to have everybody involved, but you start off with an idea. I wanted to create real currency. I did not want to create Mickey Mouse dollars, I wanted it to have real value. So you buy one, you can spend it in the park and originally there were a lot of businesses, restaurants, bars, and so forth, around Disneyland that accepted it the same as you would a dollar. And then you could spend it, or you could keep it, but you could always come back… you could use it in the park, you could turn it into a dollar.

SW: How did your job differ as Disneyland president? In general what was your job?

JL: Well, just because of my background I was probably more involved in marketing and entertainment aspects. My Executive Vice President was Norm Doerges and I basically gave him the operating parts of Disneyland. Running the park, operations, that kind of stuff. I worked more with the marketing people, the entertainment people, the food people and so forth. We had a very good relationship.

SW: You still meet and consult with the people at Disneyland, right?

Marty Sklar and I formed a committee for the fiftieth anniversary for two years before the fiftieth. The committee consisted of Marty Sklar and I, Dick Nunis, Ron Dominguez, Jim Cora, Keith Murdoch. Keith Murdock was the City Manager of Anaheim when Disneyland opened. Mary Ann Mang, Jim Garber, and Bob Gault. Bob Gault works for Dick Cook and Dick Cook was on the committee, and Gary Weaver.

SW: You know, the park felt fresh and new like I had never seen before.

JL: Because I’m old, I was very critical and didn’t have a lot of confidence that the fiftieth anniversary would be good. But I went out for that opening in May of 2005, I told Matt, and I told Jay Rasulo, who’s the Chairman of Walt Disney Attractions now that I was skeptical and critical about this fiftieth anniversary but I don’t know how, but you’ve pulled it off. The shows, the parade, the fireworks.

The look of the park has never looked better. You know, as one of the old timers, I can say the first fifty years has been great, but from what I’ve seen, what you and your staffs have done, the next fifty years are gonna make everything we did, the first fifty years, look like just the beginning. They did a great job.

SW: Do you miss working there?

The world has changed, and we’re a bunch of old guys who had our time. We had a great time. Had a wonderful time. But it’s a different world and I am not a person who looks back and says, “Oh, I wish I was there. This is how I would do it.” I don’t know how to do it. It’s done right. It’s a great park.

More from Jack:
Disneyland's opening day and the bad press it received
Before Disney and his early Disney days
Walt Disney and his favorite Disney memory

See other interviews

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in the interviews are solely those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of Mouse Clubhouse. Mouse Clubhouse accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any claims made or opinions expressed within.