When Marketers Lie

This interesting post about Edelman's expanding Wal-Mart crisis from Mack Simpson of the Adverb blog calls up an age-old advertising problem: What do we do when we get caught pretending to be consumers?   The best lines from the post:

See Edelman not register the “Working Families for Wal-Mart” domain name.

See Edelman say, “oh crap.”

Yes, Seth Godin's book says "All Marketers Are Liars" and few would dispute that, but the "Working Families For Wal-Mart" campaign goes beyond the pale.  Did anyone really believe that Jim and Laura, the folks behind the blog were real?  The RV (recreational vehicle) community were on to Jim and Laura from the get go according to the Writing On The Wal blog.  It will be interesting to see where WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) goes with the Edelman probe and if any changes result, but Wal-Mart doesn't seem to have suffered from Jim and Laura being outed as advertising flogmen.

As I researched this post I found that Wal-Mart is under more attacks than I was aware of.  This group at Save Wal-Mart is concerned about the "radical homosexual agenda."  Walmart Watch wants "the world’s largest retailer to become a better employer, neighbor, and corporate citizen."  The WIPE blog (Walmart is Pure Evil) appears to be a news aggregator for all things (evil) Walmart.  Wake Up Walmart is angry/concerned about too many things to list.  And Director Robert Greenwald wants you to know you can get the Walmart Movie on DVD for only $12.95 from the Walmart Movie website.  I wonder if Walmart is carrying the film.

On the "Walmart is good" side I found a few entries.  Walmart is prime among them flogging the Walmart Foundation website.  Yeah, that's pretty much all I found on the "good" side. 

Comments

[Jeff Flemings]

Super example (which I shared with a client yesterday!) of how NOT to tap into customer's need for real time dialogue. I wonder what the long term implications will be (if any). I'm sure you're all also familiar with the WalMart "Hub" online presence designed to attract teens to WalMart- it was immediately recognized as "fake" by real teens and they took it down soon after.

[Paul McEnany]

I hear Edelman has been suspended by WOMMA. Hopefully, they'll get the boot. They seemed to get everything right about the blogosphere, except, of course, for the doing right part.