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I'm not sure whose reputation will suffer more from this week's New Yorker article on Walmart -- the PR industry, Edelman or Wal-Mart?
With its usual great reporting style, the New Yorker's Jeffery Goldberg does a beautiful job of explaining just how Wal-Mart uses Edelman and PR in general to achieve its ends. What is really hypocritical is the extent to which Edelman portrays itself as a leader in social media -- an environment that prides itself on honesty and transparency -- and yet practices the worst forms of deception. Steve Rubel are you listening? Not surprisingly, there's no response on the article on his blog.
The article confirms that not only is Greg St. Claire (the mastermind behind Wal-Mart's fake blog about St. Claire's sister's RV trip across the country) still employed by Edelman, despite the storm of controversy he created and the damage he did to Edelman's reputation, but Richard Edelman told the New Yorker “I do believe that it is a real group of real people, as far as I know.” Goldberg goes on to write that: Working Families for Wal-Mart is housed in Edelman’s Washington office; its steering-committee members, some of whom have business ties to the company, were recruited by Edelman.
No wonder PR has a reputation for lying!
KD, you should know that there are over 100,000 members of Working Families for Wal-Mart. The reporter was given that statistic. PR is about telling the truth, not about lying. Wal-MartFacts.com gets 150,000 visitors a week who want to get another side of the story, to learn what the company is doing on environment, on low-cost prescriptions and to offer affordable products to the consumer. We are leaders in social media because we are innovating, listening and learning. Note we put up our first social media press release yesterday for Palm, which the top guy at Engadget said was first class work, albeit a bit too formal language (we will do better next time).
Posted by: Richard Edelman | March 27, 2007 at 06:43 PM
KD, you should know that there are over 100,000 members of Working Families for Wal-Mart. The reporter was given that statistic. PR is about telling the truth, not about lying. Wal-MartFacts.com gets 150,000 visitors a week who want to get another side of the story, to learn what the company is doing on environment, on low-cost prescriptions and to offer affordable products to the consumer. We are leaders in social media because we are innovating, listening and learning. Note we put up our first social media press release yesterday for Palm, which the top guy at Engadget said was first class work, albeit a bit too formal language (we will do better next time).
Posted by: Richard Edelman | March 27, 2007 at 06:37 PM