The Edelman/Wal-Mart fake blog story keeps rearing its ugly head. And it’s not going to go away any time soon….
Hans Kullin at Media Culpa reports that the url workingfamiliesforwalmart was kidnapped by an anti-Wal-mart group which launched a pretty funny parody of the Wal-mart site. Why? Because, doh, Edelman PR failed to register the most logical URL for the site.
(Ring a bell? Not too long ago, Dell’s PR firm forgot to check the URL it picked for the company’s blog. Turned out that One2One was a porn site. So Dell had to change the name from DellOne2One to Direct To Dell. Hey, a name change is always good for a brand! The theme here is PR agency cluelessness about new media.)
Here’s the bottom line: Wal-mart is engaged in all sorts of questionable and unethical activities, from running sweatshops to selling bullets. An agency that takes on a client like Wal-mart has to be willing to overlook its uglier practices. In my book, taking on a client with questionable ethics is unethical. PR has to be about more than whoring yourself to the highest bidder.
So call me a Pollyanna, and I’m sure people will call me worse, but I can’t see why any agency would work for Wal-mart to begin with. Let alone help them be even more skeevy by lying to the public.
I’m not the only one thinking about the implications of this story. I was interviewed this morning by a reporter who’s talking to a host of sources, both on and off the record, to explain the full story of Edelman’s deception. It’s coming out soon and it surely won’t be the last story on the subject.
Related posts:
“why any agency would work for Wal-mart to begin with”
Pollyanna, um, I mean BL. Just kidding.
You know the answer… Money.
it’s not enough of a reason. There are plenty of companies around with money AND ethics.
I don’t have any problem with Wal-Mart selling guns or bullets (for reasons I won’t go into here), but treating one’s employees unfairly is never a winner.
One of Wal-Mart’s problems of late has been, I think, that it is trying to be everything to everybody – and all they end up doing is offending someone else at every turn. Remember last year when they removed “Christmas” from their marketing materials?
Take a stand, be something people want to be a part of, and the right people will overlook some of the difficulties that might be inherently associated with being part of such a company.
For instance, Wal-Mart recently started selling – what is it – $4 generic prescription drugs, which helps make healthcare more affordable. Ignoring, for the moment, the difficulties generic prescription drugs cause the companies that actually did the R&D (which isn’t a very marketable concept), that is a great story to lead off with. If Wal-Mart could “be” just about that, then people would, I believe, see the company in a whole new light.
I’m not sure if Wal-Mart is to blame for this disaster or Edelman, but I’m looking forward to reading about it once it’s out.
“An agency that takes on a client like Wal-mart has to be willing to overlook its uglier practices. In my book, taking on a client with questionable ethics is unethical.”
There’s a lot to be said about leaving money on the table–that’s what we were debating at my blog ( http://www.ck-blog.com/cks_blog/2006/11/who_am_i_not.html )and at Stephen Denny’s blog yesterday ( http://note-to-cmo.blogspot.com/2006/11/note-to-cmo-profiting-badly.html ).
What I like that you’ve hit on–and hope your book will serve as model on this front– is “ethical” money. As Stephen explains, it’s the difference between profiting and profiting badly. Undoubtedly, it will take a while for corporate America to buy-in on the ethics front, but amassing more to champion this effort will help.
While at WOMMA next month, I am going to be polling attendees on whether they think the ‘probation’ that the WOMMA board handed to Edelman was the right move, not harsh enough or too harsh–and will report the results here. I’ll be running the polls anonymously so as to garner honest responses. Interested in hearing what they think.
I’ve also asked the community if they want me to poll on other questions, let me know if you have a question and I’ll do my best to include it.
Keep fighting the good fight.
BL,
Pollyanna, perhaps. But I am with you 100 percent, although bullets and guns are a free choice. And while I have never purchased either, hunters and marks(wo)men are mostly good folks, too.
I think most people have something of a love/ hate relationship with Wal-Mart. I don’t really blame Edelman for working with W-M as much as I blame them for working with them in a shady way. It has certainly come back to bite them in the butt and will keep biting them for a while.
Cam is absolutely correct that W-M is a mixed bag of good and bad. The prescription thing is a prime example. Many people in this country have very little money to buy anything and W-M provides them with a way to afford more. Many of these people hate shopping there, but have no other real choice to afford the things they want/ need. We can talk about the idealistic altruisms of what should or shouldn’t be happening, but as long as people need things cheap, W-M will continue to have a steady stream of people walking through the front doors. Does that negate their shady, demeaning policies? Not one little bit, but there are things much bigger than our lofty ideals at work here.
Don’t get me wrong- I agree with what you are saying about choosing who we work with on principles greater than money.
I see Edelman working for Wal-mart and initiatin g dishonest programs for them in exactly the same category as Rupert Murdoch staying silent on the OJ book when he owns the company Judith Ragan works for. He finally cancelled the book and the show after public ane media uproar.
Geraldo Rivera – who’s had his own issues over the years – had the balls to say he was ashamed of his employer. You hear anyone at Edelman saying that?
problem is that in wm cheap things is equal to cheap morality. until this equation is not solved wm will be blamed and it’s to be blamed.
reasonable prices can be obtained in a fair way or in a easier way: exploiting the resources.
BL – I’m not a big WalMart fan (went there once and wasn’t impressed), but I agree with Cam and Tim that they’re a mixture of good and bad. (Admittedly, the bad – the way they treat their employees,driving down quality along with price, etc. – are pretty awful.)And Edelman deserves all the negatives its getting for its faux blogging. But wouldn’t PR firms be serving their clients better if they weren’t just helping them spin, but were actually trying to guide them toward better behavior by leveling with them about the behaviors that give them a well-merited black eye? Don’t just help them spin it – encourage them to change it! Or am I being a Pollyanna, too?
Maureen- You hit hit the nail on the head! That is it- as responsible marketers, we can do this and that is our job, if we so choose to take the moral high ground. If you can deliver results to them by helping them change behavior, then they will change behavior. Money speaks to them as much as it speaks to anybody else.
Excellent point!
psst: Add Time Warner to the unethical list. Superman is a spammer…
http://www.ck-blog.com/cks_blog/2006/11/its_a_bird_its_.html
Maureen: Yes, I think that is a Pollyana point of view.
I wish it was so simple that PR firms just need to try to educate clients like Wal-mart, and others that have basically unethical, and sometimes even evil, products and/or ways of doing business.
Decisions about things like driving down quality, treating employees badly, running sweatshops, etc. are not decisions PR firms make for the client. Those are inherent to the client’s way of doing business. Edelman accepted those things when they got on Wal-mart’s train.
They could walk away and work for another company that has a basically honest approach to business sustainability.
They can’t talk about transparency, honesty, or ethics with any credibility when they are down in the dirt with pigs. (Nothing against pigs, by the way)
I keep hearing this anti-Walmart speak from alot of marketers and public relations professionals. Quite frankly, I’m sick of it. Is selling bullets ethical? That is such a subjective question. If someone believes that it is unethical then they are ignoring the fact that many people practice skeet shooting (not people) for fun. But I digress.
To me, the real villain is Edelman. They knew better but committed the act anyway – all the while preaching transparency. There’s no way around it, Edelman is a two-faced company.
yes, absolutely, Edelman is a villian here. that’s what started the whole fracas.
You might want to check out what Amanda’s been saying on her blog about the PR industry, blogging, and multiple Edelman faux pas. http://www.strumpette.com
The girl’s had much to say (and question) about blog, blog ethics, and the ethics at play within the PR industry.
I’m admittedly very late to this discussion, but what the heck. We’ll call it fashionably late for now.
Walmart is a funny company. They are marvelously successful. They are actually a joy to do business with — I’ve found their merchants to be honest and straight-forward, every time I’ve ever worked with them. And that’s not common.
They’ve also done a huge service to every working family living paycheck to paycheck by providing tremendous service at low (not lowest, either) prices.
They’re not perfect. I’ve heard the standard stories about teaching new employees how to get food stamps, etc. This Edelman issue in all probability didn’t come from WMT.
But I don’t think Walmart ends up in my “too unethical to do business with” pile. I reserve that for tobacco companies, the porn industry, Harper Collins, and most politicians.
Three cheers for Wal-Mart. And now they’ve started selling 3 months of those generics for $10. Wow! For my other meds that aren’t generic I use the prescription discount card that I found at http://www.rxdrugcard.com. Low membership fee. Drug prices posted to check before you join.
lcb Een plaatje zegt alles, toch ? amm Het volledige rapport is hier te vinden. Lees natuurlijk i de blogposting. h v
Thanks for interesting post! btt
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