Edelman's fleas
No surprise here. The lack of response (several days/news cycles) from Edelman (or VP/blogger Steve Rubel) about their involvement in latest marketing scandal at Wal-Mart is starting to generate a ton of bad press for the agency.
Look at Techmeme ... The story is shifting focus in the blogosphere. What was a Wal-Mart scandal over a phoney blog is becoming a much larger issue of ethics, integrity, transparency, and control in the PR and marketing business.
Scott Karp's piece on the issue of control is worth reading, as I think it gets at the root of why Wal-Mart and/or Edelman would make a decision like this in the first place.
So Edelman naturally fell back on the approach that has worked for decades — control the conversation by manufacturing it, because if you can’t control the conversation, then you can’t make it do what you want. Edelman wanted to make consumers think that Wal-Mart is a hip place that you’d want to use as the anchor point for a road trip. The problem is it’s not. And because blogging is not a control-based medium, Edelman couldn’t make Wal-Mart appear to be something it’s not. It rang false, and they got caught.
When you hang around dogs, you get fleas.
Previous posts on i-boy:
Techmeme wakes up to Wal-Mart fiasco
Wal-Mart sucks with Edelman's help
Technorati Tags: blogs, dinosaurs, walmart, edelman
Monday, October 16, 2006
 Comments:
Hey! Don't blame dogs!
Dogs don't lie, omit, pretend, have ethical breeches, or write fake blogs.
xo
Benny Bix Ochman Labradoodle
# posted by BL Ochman : 12:59 AM, October 19, 2006
I just made a charitable donation to the Dogs Trust as my way of apologizing for my slanderous comments towards dogs everywhere.
# posted by George Nimeh : 2:10 PM, October 20, 2006
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